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Forced Acquaintances 


^ Book fot (®irl0 


BY 

/ 

EDITH ROBINSON 



BOSTON 

TIC^NOR AND COMPANY 
1887 



Copyright, 1887, 

By Ticknor and Company. 

All Rights Reserved. 


Electrotypbd 

By C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The New Home 7 

II. Getting Settled 39 

III. The New School . 57 

IV. Cinderella’s Ball 70 

V. How THE Work-a-Day World Looked . . 100 

VI. At the Hospital 121 

VII. Suburban Festivities 141 

VIII. Sleepy Hollow’s Event 162 

IX. A Beggar on Horseback 180 

X. Where She Bode to 207 

XI. Black Friday 241 

XII. A New Convert 263 

XIII. Domestic xVffairs 278 

XIV. Aspirations 301 

XV. Who Seeks, Finds 317 

XVI. Worries 339 

XVII. Kitty’s Housekeeping 352 

XVIII. Dark Days 361 

XIX. Home Again 381 







FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE NEW HOME. 

“ There, now ! we are all clean and sweet as 
a rose,” and Dr. Arthur Ware, having finished 
wringing the last dish-towel with his handsome 
physician-hands, spread it beside its fellows on 
the freshly painted window-sill, and contemplated 
the steaming row with much satisfaction. 

“You may be, although in that case your ap- 
pearance belies you,” retorted his sister Mar- 
ion, from her seat on the inverted tub upon which 
she had wearily dropped. “ As for me, I am 
neither. With the dirt of a moving ground into 
my very soul, I doubt if I shall ever be clean 
again ; and as for ‘ sweet,’ what with the bother 
and worry of unpunctual expressmen, the smash- 
ing of china, and mysterious disappearance of 
everything I hold most dear, my temper is soured 
for life. We have been used to counting our- 
7 


8 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


selves as at least a respectably clean family ; but 
I, for one, no longer put in any claim to that dis- 
tinction. No one knows what dark and mysteri- 
ous accumulations he cherishes in the corners of 
his house, until he tries to root himself out, 
and finds that every tug brings with it its own 
especial dirt. I never liked Benjamin Franklin ; 
there is something so exasperating in his goody- 
goody air and wise little maxims. But he was 
right when he said that ‘ three removes are as bad 
as a fire.’ ” 

“Well, it’s over now,” said Arthur, with cheer- 
ful consolation, as he seated himself upon the big 
slate table, on whose surface the young Wares had 
done sums, drawn pictures, and rolled molasses 
candy into delectable shining sticks, from time 
immemorial. 

“Is it?” drearily queried Marion, looking 
around the small kitchen, with its pots and ket- 
tles, its litter of straw, a packing-case or two, a 
huge shovel, a coal-hod upside down, matched on 
the other side of the window by a confused pile of 
ironing-boards, chairs, and a clothes-horse big 
enough to entirely fill the little room when un- 
furled. She was beginning to have a great many 
fears about their new life, and the clothes-horse 


THE NEW HOME. 


9 


embodied one of them. Another was, whether 
the toast-rack had arrived safely. She had gone 
to the dining-room closet several times already to 
satisfy herself. If it had not come, or had shared 
the fate of the celery-glass, she felt that they 
could not keep house. 

Beside the window was a coffee-mill, and by the 
range — large enough for a hotel — was a small 
brass clock, perched upon a basket of flat-irons, 
ticking away as cheerfully as if it still stood in 
its old place on the sitting-room mantel-shelf, 
between the brass candlesticks. Everywhere 
about were tubs, boxes, buckets, and baskets. 
Then there was one box — it was round and green, 
and held beans — on the little shelf by the sink. 
Why had not the expressman put it with the 
others ? Marion had taken in the whole of the 
little room before she answered. 

“ The worst is yet to come — the getting things 
into their proper places and the general clearing- 
up before we can begin to feel settled. And 
after that, dusting, sweeping, bed-making, and 
scrubbing, for the rest of our existence. We had 
looked forward to such a different life — that is 
the worst of it.*’ 

It was a moment ot two before Arthur, in his 


10 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


turn, made any reply. Marion had seemed older 
to him, more than once, in these past few weeks, 
than he had thought her capable of appearing. 
It was still light enough to see the way her lips 
were pressed together and that the lower part of 
her face was very firm. Had it always been so ? 
It was not, however, light enough for him to see, 
happily for his sister’s pride, that the eyes, sharp 
rather than soft, and shining too often with a 
scornful light, were just then softened by some- 
thing — not tears ! She had taken cold, perhaps, 
when she hung out those last towels. Had she 
shed a drop all through the packing, had she let 
mother see a single despondent look as they took 
down curtains and stripped the walls of pic- 
tures, or allowed one sigh to be audible as she 
alone packed the stores of pretty china and dainty 
glass that never again could look so lovely as in 
the chestnut and crimson-hung dining-room, with 
the open fire giving the last touch to what a din- 
ing-room should be ? Even at the last hard mo- 
ment, when she had left the dear old house 
forever, had she not run back with a smile and a 
cheery word for mother, standing in the long 
parlor giving directions about the big mirrors that 
had been on the walls so long they seemed part 


THE NEW HOME. H 

of the house? When mirrors and curtains and 
pictures went, there was not much left. If she 
could live through all that with dry eyes, was it 
likely she should weep now, when the uprooting 
was over ? 

Arthur could not hear the unspoken soliloquy, 
and did not answer. Perhaps he had his own 
thoughts. They were not of toast-racks or 
clothes-horses. But he was young and ambitious 
and the past three years had been ones of unre- 
mitting work. Things were indeed very different 
now, and Marion may have struck their key-note 
when she presently continued : — 

“ You, instead of sitting on that table in your 
shirt-sleeves, should be on your way to Germany, 
and by and by should come home to private 
practice,” she spoke as though the practice were 
waiting for her brother — as indeed in her own 
mind it was, “ I should be at Mt. Desert, with 
the Merediths, and mother and Kitty at the moun- 
tains. It seems as if I had never looked forward 
to a summer as to this one. Mercifully, Kitty 
has been out of the way,” she concluded, with 
the elder-sister air that was one of the few things 
that had power to annoy the younger sister 
referred to. 


12 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ I should have liked to see the Paris and Vi- 
enna hospitals, but this is a very decent sort of 
place, and assistant-surgeonships don’t go beg- 
ging,” replied Arthur, with rather a forced smile ; 
but Marion retorted, impatiently : — 

“I know, I know, and you were an awfully 
clever fellow to have got it, Arthur ; but I wanted 
to see you somewhere else. And there are so 
many doctors, that money as well as brains seems 
necessary to give a new one a start.” 

“ There aren’t such a thundering lot of good 
ones, however,” and Dr. Ware’s tones suggested 
that one had been recently added to the number. 

“ Yes, it is better with a man. But all a girl 
can do is to stay at home and wash dishes,” and 
Marion contemplated her outspread hands. They 
were red, and the palms were calloused, and the 
knuckles already seemed rough and prominent ; 
they looked parboiled, too. No doubt, the last 
blemish would wear off in time ; but the others 
probably never would — and she had been proud 
of her slender white hands. They looked “ nice.” 
That was a favorite word with Marion. She did 
not consider herself pretty — only “nice-looking.” 

“There are only two things a girl can do, teach 
or write,” replied Arthur, who might perhaps have 


THE NEW HOME. 


13 


taken a broader view of the question had its sub- 
ject been other than his own sister. “ Not that 
there is any need for you to do anything,” con- 
cluded he, somewhat hastily, and straightening 
himself proudly as he spoke. He would have 
given the last cent of his own small salary to his 
family without a murmur. It was, in his eyes, 
the natural and proper thing that a man should 
work for the women belonging to him, and, like 
many men, perhaps the manliest of the sex, he 
disliked the idea of any one of them seeking for 
occupation outside her own household. 

Marion understood all this, and replied more to 
what was left unsaid than to the few spoken 
words. 

“ If I could only help a little. But what can I 
do ? I haven’t the brains to write. I don’t know 
enough to teach. I’m as well educated as the 
majority of girls ; but when it comes to solid knowl- 
edge, the wide range of studies that is required, 
I am nowhere. I play, but the market is overrun 
with music teachers. I embroider — so does every- 
body. I sketch and draw — just enough to show 
me how practically ignorant I am. Arthur, if you 
don’t take that bean-box off the shelf this minute, 
I shall cry.” 


14 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Arthur’s gray eyes twinkled behind the glasses 
that seemed as much a part of his face as the eyes 
themselves, or the rather long but decidedly 
intellectual nose. His mouth and chin were hid- 
den by a short, thick brown beard, so that one 
could not see that the lips had a sensitive curve 
to them and that the chin was square. The lips 
were twitching now to accompany the twinkle, as 
he took the offending box from its resting-place 
and put it in the smaller of the two closets. It 
was the act of both a brother and a physician. 
But matters were not much improved ; for, man- 
like, he left the door ajar. Marion did not like 
to get up and shut it ; for she had seen Arthur’s 
ill concealed amusement plainly enough, and to 
be laughed at was the one thing of which she 
stood in fear. 

“ Getting hysterical, eh ? ” 

“ I am not ! ” And, feeling that it behooved her 
to talk on, to prove how far from tears she was, 
she continued, “ There never was a family less 
adapted to coming down gracefully than ours. If 
it came to the point of being absolutely depend- 
ent on myself, all I could do is to cook. And 
even that means only the ornamental part — the 
pies and cake.” 


THE NEW HOME. 15 

“There you overrate your abilities, my good 
girl. Your pies have no in’ards.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t use such disgusting 
terms,” snapped Marion, and then, reverting to 
the plaintive style, “ Even in moving, one could 
see how painful degeneration is to our fastidious 
tastes. As I packed the china away and we came 
down through cups without saucers, mugs, tum- 
blers and jelly-pots to tin dippers, I watched 
mother’s growing uneasiness ; at the tin dippers 
she rebelled and declared she would rather go 
without tea than have it served in such a 
fashion.” 

“ I don’t think you were much better,” replied 
Arthur, laughing. “ I have a distinct recollection 
of coming in one day and finding you scolding 
because the expressman had taken your bureau 
unseasonably.” 

“ Who wouldn’t have, when my boots and every 
collar and cuff I owned was in it ! And I was 
the more vexed because you had given orders to 
have my long mirror left at the hospital instead 
of here. It was taking a base advantage of our 
upheaval.” 

“ Say another uncivil word and I shall feel it 
my duty to seat you in the coal-hod.” 


16 


FOR CED A CQ UAINTANCES. 


“It couldn’t make me dirtier than I am,” re- 
turned Marion, laughing. But the little burst of 
sunshine was clouded over the next minute, and 
she added, despondently, — “ and am likely to be 
to the end of my days, a Cinderella without the 
prince.” 

There lurked in the last words another worry 
that perhaps deserved to be classed with the toast- 
rack and clothes-horse. Marion was seventeen ; 
and if she had indulged in dreams of love and 
lovers, some of them sweet and harmless, others 
rank nonsense, it was no more than most girls of 
her age have done. She had been in school till 
the last summer, and Mrs. Ware, like a wise 
mother, had kept her from really entering society, 
though she was permitted to go to small parties 
occasionally. But now, just when her companions 
were really to come out, she was doomed to a life 
without parties or concerts or theatres or sociables 
and all their pleasant surroundings. The chok- 
ing feeling had come back, and this time it was 
due to a sudden conviction that she was doomed 
to a loveless existence. 

But she was far too proud to let any one see her 
in tears, so it was with a resolute determination 
not to be blue any longer, or, at any rate, to keep 


THE NEW HOME. 17 

her despondency to herself, that she jumped up, 
saying : — 

“ It’s time to think about tea. I told Maggie 
I’d see to that if she’d arrange things upstairs. 
Mother is coming out on the six o’clock train, and 
I mean to have everything nice and ready for her. 
I wonder how one makes tea, though — a cupful 
— no, that’s coffee — O, I know. ‘ One teaspoon- 
ful for each person and one for the pot,’ the 
English novels say.” 

“I’ll see to that,” and Arthur slid gracefully off 
the table. “ I make excellent tea,” with the con- 
fidence of an experienced co^ok, “Just you tell 
me where it is, and then you go ahead on the 
toast.” 

“ It’s there,” pointing with one grimy finger to 
a brown paper parcel. 

“ It don’t smell like it,” said the Doctor, tearing 
off a corner and sniffing dubiously. 

“Yes, it’s tea,” asserted Marion, positively; 
“ I’m perfectly sure.” 

“ It’s more like sage to my nose. And here’s 
the tea-caddy, full. This may not be the superior 
article I am in the habit of concocting, as there 
seems to be coffee mixed with it. Now where’s 
the teapot?” 


18 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“Beneath your nose,” replied Marion, not at all 
abashed by her mistaken confidence. She would 
be equally ready the next time to insist that sage 
was Formosa. “ There’s cold tongue for tea, too, 
if that horrid cat hasn’t eaten it.” 

“ Why don’t you go to work yourself, may I 
ask ? ” demanded Arthur, suddenly, as his sister 
stood watching him at his novel employment. 
He was slicing the tongue with a precision that 
had something surgical in it. “Is this what you 
call division of labor ? ” 

“I don’t understand political economy. More- 
over, I can’t find the knives. It’s so funny to see 
you do that.” 

“A truly great mind can lend itself to any- 
thing. Take mine.” 

“ You haven’t been dissecting any cats with it 
lately? Though I could find it in my heart to 
forgive you if you had dissected Beauty.” 

“Not a cat, honor bright ! Now you go ahead 
on the toast, or you don’t have any tea.” 

They say happiness is to be found as certainly 
in poverty as in riches ; but no one has as yet 
started the idea that it is sweet to come down in 
the world. Certainly the Wares were not finding 
it so. Mr. Ware had been dead some years; his 


THE NEW HOME, 


19 


firm, a wealthy one, continued the business, and 
the family received the same income they had 
been accustomed to. They were rooted in a life 
that seemed all the more immutable because it 
was so quiet and solid, and its comfort so genuine, 
without show or pretence. If not exactly rich, as 
one reckons riches nowadays, they had every- 
thing to make existence agreeable, such as a large 
home-like house, in a neighborhood of eminent 
respectability, servants enough, plenty of money 
to spend on pretty dresses, theatres, concerts, and 
summers at the beach or mountains. The com- 
ing of dress-maker and seamstress with every 
autumn and spring was part of the inevitable law 
that made the snow fall or the trees bud. To see 
the new play was simply what everybody did. 
The only question to trouble them at the approach 
of hot weather was to choose among the many 
pleasant summer resorts before closing the house 
for the season. People that had no need to 
worry for the morrow, or to know the many sides 
that a dollar has. 

And now they had left the city for winters as 
well as summers, and all that pleasant life must 
change. 

Things had been going badly with the firm for. 


20 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


some time, and, after a brave and silent struggle 
against the tide, it collapsed suddenly ; the first 
intimation of trouble Mrs. Ware received was the 
news of a heavy failure, and the loss of almost 
their entire income. There would be enough to 
live upon, perhaps, with care and hateful econ- 
omy ; but the dear old home must be given up, 
and the dear old days were ended forever. 

It was hard on them all, from Mrs. Ware, who 
disliked the country, to Kitty, who would be 
obliged to leave her school and circle of friends 
there. But, in some respects, it came hardest of 
all on Marion, who had been looking forward to 
her freedom from school and entrance into soci- 
ety. Now, all at once, she had to confront the 
question of dollars and cents, and to realize how 
impracticable it is for a poor girl to attempt 
“ going out.” Arthur had been fortunate enough 
to secure an appointment in one of the city hos- 
pitals, immediately on taking his degree. 

The house had been let at last, and Kitty, 
during the moving, sent to an aunt’s — an ar- 
rangement in which Marion had a hand, for she 
and Kitty were apt to rub each other the wrong 
way, and during the hot weather, and the work so 
trying in more than its physical sense, Marion 


THE NEW HOME, 21 

felt that her sister would have been the tradi- 
tional last straw. Kitty was incapable of real 
pain. She was having a good time at auntie’s 
now, doing nothing, as ^ usual, while Marion had 
borne the burden, somewhat alleviated by a pleas- 
ant feeling of unselfishness and self-sacrifice, min- 
gled with irritation that her sister should accept 
her easy share so coolly. 

Upstairs, meanwhile, Maggie had been busy 
making beds, sweeping, dusting, and picking up 
stray papers, strings, and boxes. The furniture 
had been thrust hastily into the different rooms, 
and her attempts at arrangement were rather un- 
fortunate; but all was neat and clean, and she 
worked with the hearty good-will an Irish girl 
nearly always shows in her employer’s misfor- 
tunes, together with an equal readiness to take 
advantage of them. 

Marion finished her toast, and, putting it beside 
the fire, ran up to change her dress. But the 
sight of her bedroom gave her the most homesick 
twinge she had yet felt. The walls were unpa- 
pered, the pictures were not hung, and Maggie 
had placed the chairs in a stiff row against one 
side of the room, with the table in front of them, 
as though for a lecture. There were two bu- 


22 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


reaus, which reminded her unpleasantly that she 
and Kitty were to sleep together. It was so 
different a room from the one she had called hers 
at home — she wondered if she could ever think 
of another place as “ home ” — that the choked 
feeling came back with redoubled force. 

But again she kept back the tears that wanted 
to come, and this time not from pride, but from a 
higher and better motive ; thought for another — 
for her mother, who had been working hard all 
the afternoon, seeing to the last load, unaccount- 
ably bigger than all that had gone before. She 
must not be greeted with red eyes. But, as the 
catastrophe Marion had warded off so long was 
imminent as long as she remained in her new 
apartment, she hurriedly brushed her hair and 
slipped into her dress, and, with eyes closed 
tightly and mouth drawn down at the corners, 
ran down over the carpetless stairs, to rejoin 
Arthur in the dining-room. 

There it was really not so bad, and she stood 
on the threshold with a sigh of relief. They had 
worked hard all through the short autumn after- 
noon to make that one room, at least, habitable. 
It was prettily papered, the crimson lambrequins 
hung at the windows, and pictures on the walls. 


THE NEW HOME. 


23 


The vases had been unpacked, too — the big 
. Chinese ones, and the little ones with the Egyp- 
tian girls’ heads on them, that Marion liked above 
all others; and on the handsome sideboard had 
been arranged the china that was the delight of 
her heart. It was an old-fashioned blue set, 
having on it the funny pictorial legend of the 
lovers true under a mulberry tree, who were 
changed into one, in some mythical garden of 
the Flowery Land, whence it had been brought 
by Mrs. Ware’s father, a sea-captain, in the 
days when Salem was the town of sea-cap- 
tains and great merchants. There were a good 
many odd treasures about the house that he 
and his fathers had brought home from foreign 
lands. 

And there, in the corner, ticked the tall clock ; 
wrong, as usual, and telling false time in such a 
perverted fashion that one never knew whether it 
were ten minutes fast, or ten minutes slow. On 
the table was a surprise, for Arthur had taken 
advantage of his sister’s absence to set forth the 
pretty gold-rimmed tea-set. 

“Looks neat, doesn’t it?” said the young man’s 
voice, as he came into the room, bringing the 
cake-basket and making a tremendous din with 


24 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the big bell, that, never too musical, had got 
cracked on its late journey. 

“ Nice as can be,” replied his sister, when she 
could make herself heard. “It’s rather early, 
but let’s light up. It will look so much more 
cheerful when mother comes. You do it. I’m 
afraid. Kerosene may be as safe as gas, but, at 
present, it always seems to me on the point of 
blowing up.” 

“ Girls are all cowards. It’s their nature.” 

“ Then don’t blame them for it. We each have 
our little prejudices, and mine is an unconquer- 
able aversion to lamps, cows, and grasshoppers. 
I never was intended for a country life. There’s 
mother ! ” 

The front gate opened and shut with some 
difficulty, for, like most of the appurtenances of 
the house, it did not work right. Marion forgot 
her wretchedness. After all, was it the pictures 
and mirrors and curtains that made home ? Some 
such idea was in her mind, as she ran through 
the hall, stumbling over a roll of stair-carpeting, 
and recovering herself only to trip over the tongs. 
But she was at the front door first, and, as her 
mother entered, was able to say, with all hearti- 
ness, “Welcome home.” 


THE NEW HOME. 


25 


“ Dear children, you have done well ! ” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Ware, as she stood on the threshold 
of the little room, looking thoroughly pleased, 
partly at its aspect, and more at the desire of her 
children to please her that she read in it. 

A sweet face had she to every one, to her 
children a lovely one. Pleasant, serene manners, 
and low voice that gave one a sense of rest and 
comfort. Oddly young-looking, too, to be the 
mother of the tall young man, though, from her 
expression in looking at him, there could be no 
doubt that she was his mother. One hardly 
knew when she entered a room. But they all 
knew when she left it. 

“ Flowers in the vases, and my own cup ! — 
Why, Marion, why did you take the trouble to 
unpack that ! ” It was like Mrs. Ware to appre- 
ciate such little things, — perhaps because she had 
such a rare tact for doing them herself. “ Supper 
ready ? And how nice it all looks ! Let’s sit 
down at once. Bring in the tea, dear, can’t you, 
if Maggie is upstairs still. I’m so glad you could 
spend this first evening with us, Arthur ! ” 

She had been taking off her mantle and brown 
straw bonnet as she spoke, and had seated herself 
behind the Wedgwood tea-service, giving little 


26 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

indefinite touches to the napkin and cups and 
sugar-bowl. Nothing looked different, but it all 
felt so ; and Marion ran blithely out for the tea, 
with the load of bean-boxes, clothes-horses, and 
kindred troubles off her mind. 

The toast was burnt around the edges, though 
she had spent ten minutes trying to scrape it 
off, and the tea bore a curious resemblance to 
coffee ; but these trifling drawbacks were over- 
looked, — each had secretly resolved not to let 
any shadow of things departed throw itself over 
their incoming, and the first meal progressed 
cheerily enough. 

Each had his or her especial bit of brightness 
to add, too. Mrs. Ware told how, at the last mo- 
ment, the Irishman who had done their odd jobs 
for years had come to tell her how sorry he was 
for their misfortunes, with more heart-felt sym- 
pathy than they had met with from some people 
higher. up in the social scale. Arthur had received 
a kindly and helpful letter from one of the great 
doctors in Doctor’s Row, to whom he had lately 
been acting as assistant. And Marion had to tell 
how good their new neighbors had been ; one 
sending a pie, another a dainty little luncheon at 
just the right moment, and a third running in 


TBE NEW HOME, 27 

through the afternoon with pleasant bits of talk 
and offers of help. 

“ The bell ! ” exclaimed Marion, as a loud peal 
sounded through the house. “Who can it be at 
this hour. Why don’t Maggie go ! ” 

“ Maggie never does go till she finishes what 
she is engaged upon. She is a beautiful exem- 
plar of ‘ One thing at a time.’ I’ll go,” said 
Arthur. 

But the door was open and shut before he had 
fairly risen. Some one had entered, and a voice 
was saying, in a tone of satisfaction : — 

“ Ah, I’ve found you at last. Why didn’t you 
tell me that all the houses were exactly alike ? I 
thought it would be as well to ring here, because 
I entered one house without ceremony, heard them 
talking, and left without explanation. I presume 
they are still thinking I was after the overcoats.” 

All this was said from the entry. The owner 
of the voice had stumbled twice, but continued 
her talk unmoved. It would take more than the 
accidents of tongs and carpeting to upset Kitty 
Ware’s composure. 

“ Well, here I am,” and she stood on the thresh- 
old, looking in on them. 

She was a very pretty girl, and quite thoroughly 


28 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


aware of it. Not that she was conceited ; calmly 
satisfied, — that was all. Pretty, too, in an unusual 
way, with her clear, pale complexion, and the big 
gray eyes with curling black lashes that contrasted 
so well with the light brown hair, which she wore 
in a heavy braid tied up in her neck. Her mouth 
was like Arthur’s. There was a gold locket at 
her throat, and she had a trick of fingering it as 
she talked ; if she were ever embarrassed or trou- 
bled, the locket knew it. She was dressed in 
brown, with a brown silk umbrella in her hand, 
and a brown plaid ulster over her arm. She had 
had a bag, — brown, too, — when she started, but 
it was cumbersome and had been left somewhere 
on the road, — at the little depot, perhaps, — Kitty 
would recollect by and by, when it was time for 
somebody to pick it up for her. She had no far- 
ther responsibility in the matter. 

“ Thought I’d give you a pleasant surprise ! ” 
exclaimed she, standing in the doorway, and ad- 
dressing them all, but looking straight at Marion. 
Marion was not the one to let a gantlet lie un- 
noticed. 

“ I hate surprises,” replied she, pettishly. “ Why 
in the world didn’t you stay at auntie’s till we 
were settled, instead of coming in now, when 


THE NEW HOME. 29 

everything is higgledy-piggledy, and adding an- 
other element of confusion ? ” 

“ Homesick. And I thought I’d help,” replied 
Kitty, blithely. 

“ A pretty time to offer — and a highly charac- 
teristic one.” 

It had begun again, the never-ending strife. 
Why was it Kitty always stirred her the wrong 
way ? There was no other person on earth who 
had such power to do it. Marion had not risen 
with the others to greet her sister, but sat leaning 
back in her chair, looking at her with a face the 
reverse of welcome. But little did Kitty care. 
She tossed her hat and jacket into one chair, sat 
down in another and fingered her locket. Evi- 
dently at home at once. Marion thought of the 
dreadful room upstairs, and felt that her sister 
intentionally insulted her misery. 

“ Have you eaten everything up ? ” inquired 
the new-comer, scanning the table. “ I’m awfully 
hungry.” 

“ You might have written, at least,” said 
Marion. 

“ I might if I’d chosen, but you see I did not 
choose.” Kitty’s voice, always even, had times 
when it was fairly monotonous, and at these times 


30 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


her hand was always at her throat. “ Some more 
toast, please. Cut thin and done brown.” 

“Cut it brown and do it thin yourself, then. 
Who do you think is going to wait on you ? ” de- 
manded Marion, angrily. 

“ Passion is making you a trifle incoherent, is it 
not ? ” returned Kitty, in the particularly calm 
tones with which she usually met any display of 
excitement on her sister’s part. 

“ Hush, hush, Marion. Kitty is tired. Maggie 
hasn’t finished upstairs yet, dear, and I’m afraid 
the fire is down. Don’t you want to come out in 
the kitchen and get warm ? ” 

“ Thank you, but I’m not cold, I ran so,” re- 
plied Kitty; and Mrs. Ware, who had had a dou- 
ble object in her proposal, left the room with an 
anxious face. 

“ I should think you’d be ashamed to let mother 
wait on you. Don’t you know how tired she is ? ” 
asked Marion. 

Mrs. Ware heard the words, and it was not be- 
cause she was tired that she sighed. It was one 
of the troubles of her life that these two could 
never come together without strife. Yet perhaps 
she never gave a deeper proof of her wise mother- 
love, than in rarely attempting interference, ex- 


THE NEW HOME, 


31 


cept in some such indirect way as the present. 
With Marion, never. Strong character though 
the girl had, she had, too, the weakness of many 
strong characters. Advice, however gently of- 
fered, steeled her in her own way. A word too 
much and she would have taken her own path, 
though it led to destruction. With Kitty, guid- 
ance sometimes seemed even more hopeless, and 
her mother did not know exactly how to reach 
her. “ There was nothing there to get at,’’ 
Marion said, bitterly. But mother-love knew 
better, and mother-love bided its time to reach 
both hearts and draw them together. Circum- 
stances might help, too ; might lead Marion to see; 
— and Kitty — well, Mrs. Ware never felt sure of 
anything about Kitty, except that, of the two, she 
was the more likely to be touched by some out- 
side influence. 

Both were good-natured in their different ways, 
so long as they were apart ; but the minute they 
came together, with or without pretext, — some of 
their liveliest battles had been in the latter case, — 
the sparks flew and there were hard words, sharp 
and cutting from the one, cool and taunting from 
the other, and ill-feeling that lasted for days after. 
It seemed almost as though the two girls could 


32 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


not help it themselves. They were of the tem- 
peraments that clashed, the opposing poles that, 
brought into connection, necessarily produced 
sparks. 

Marion had said as much as this once. But 
Kitty never got even as far as an effort at self- 
exculpation on the way to a better state of things. 
Simply, as now, “ It was all your fault, Marion. If 
mother was tired, why in the world did not you 
get the toast ? ” demanded she. And the most 
aggravating part of it all was that she did pot see 
how provoking her conduct was, nor did it once 
occur to her that she might wait on herself. 

“ Don’t you think I’m tired, too ? ” replied 
Marion, angrily. “ It’s a piece of your usual sel- 
fishness to come home and actually make work. 
Children are trouble enough simply by being in 
the way.” 

“ I am no more a child than you are. You are 
exactly two years and six months older than I,” 
replied Kitty, with suavity. 

“ Seven,” retorted Marion. 

“ Six. Go look in the Bible. And while you 
are about it, see what it says about a dinner of 
herbs and a stalled ox. Don’t see as I’m likely to 
get the substantial part of the latter repast, how- 


THE HEW HOME, 


83 


ever liberal you may be with the accompaniment. 
You might have left me a little bit of that ox’s 
tongue, however.” 

“I’ve heard of somebody before now quoting 
Scripture to serve his own ends.” 

“ Quite likely. You know more about his ways 
than I do.” 

“ Oh, I say, girls, drop it, can’t you ? ” Arthur 
had been looking over the evening paper till such 
time as it should please his sisters to declare 
truce. “ Why didn’t you come out with mother, 
Kitty ? ” 

“ Too late, of course.” 

Kitty evidently considered the explanation a 
satisfactory one, for she offered no other. 

“ Children, children both,” repeated twenty-one- 
year-old Arthur, looking sternly at them through 
his glasses, “ if you don’t stop this wrangling, I 
shall be forced to send you both to bed.” 

“OhVdear, that reminds me we are to sleep to- 
gether,” said Kitty, plaintively. 

“You can’t feel worse about it than I do,” re- 
plied Marion, bitterly. 

Mrs. Ware came in before more could be said, 
with the toast. She had not thought it too much 
trouble, after her hard day’s work, to rake down 


84 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the fire, and hold the slices at fork’s length over 
the few yet glowing coals. So Kitty concluded 
to let warfare go for the present, and devoted 
herself to her tea. 

She had a good deal to tell about her visit, 
avoiding, with particular care, anything likely to 
interest Marion ; an attention her sister was 
prompt to retaliate — after clearing away the 
supper table, in which she received no offer of 
help from Kitty — by taking up the newspaper 
and becoming apparently absorbed in its contents. 
Mrs. Ware looked distressed, and Arthur tried 
good-naturedly to draw her into the talk, but 
without avail. The evening that had begun so 
brightly had clouded over sadly ; and it was not 
losses, or hard work, or forebodings for the fu- 
ture that had done it. 

Yet whose fault was it ? Marion might as well 
have been looking at the clock as at the printed 
columns before her, for all she stared at them as 
though she expected they held an answer. Not 
hers, surely. The accustomed feeling of irritation 
was in her heart, nay, it was there worse than 
ever, tired mentally and physically as she was. 
“The dinner of herbs and love withal.” There 
was no need of searching the Bible for the pas- 


THE NEW HOME. 


35 


sage ; it was only too unpleasantly running in her 
mind. Warm-hearted though the girl was for 
every one else, there were times when she won- 
dered if she had any real affection for this 
younger sister. Once or twice lately, she had even 
been frightened at the feeling that was in her 
heart toward her. 

She must get rid of that passage somehow — 
there was nothing interesting in the paper, any 
more than in Kitty’s chatter. And she was tired 
and sleepy. She kissed her mother, said good- 
night to Arthur, who was to return to his hospital 
that night, betook herself to her room, and un- 
dressed, as she had dressed, with closed eyes. It 
was not long before Kitty followed, and without 
making any remarkable effort to keep from wak- 
ing her sister — though it may have been only 
accident that the chair was tipped over — un- 
dressed and crept into bed beside her. If she had 
thought her bedfellow had contrived to remain 
wrapped in slumber in spite of her endeavors, she 
was at once shown her mistake. 

“ Now don’t kick and scream, as you generally 
do, because I’m tired,” growled Marion. 

‘‘ I dare say I shall, because I often do, you 
know. But if I kick particularly hard to-night, 


36 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

you may know it is because I am awake,” retorted 
Kitty. 

Marion was tired, as she had said, and was 
sinking off to sleep again in a confused jumble of 
thought — how heartless Kitty was — and the 
toast-rack couldn’t be got into that little kitchen, 
the range took up so much room, and she did not 
know how to cook a stalled ox — was a stalled ox 
different from any other kind — when a queer 
little sound came from the depths of the pillow 
beside her. It was a sound like a sob, but of 
course it could not be that. 

“Who’s that — what’s the matter?” she mur- 
mured drowsily. 

No answer but a little louder sob and a gulp as 
though somebody was trying very hard to be 
quiet. 

“ That isn’t you, Kitty ? ” 

There was a sudden movement beside her, Kit- 
ty — was it Kitty ? — was sitting up straight and 
talking very fast. 

“Yes, it is I, Marion Ware. I suppose you 
think I don’t care about leaving home and coming 
to this mean little house and have you snap at me, 
cross as a bear. It’s just making me feel as 
though I didn’t belong anywhere, was a Little 


THE NEW HOME. 


37 


Wanderer. I was miserable all the way home, 
for I thought our house was going to be one in a 
brick block that you can see from the car-windows 
just out of the city. And I kept praying — yes, 
praying, Marion Ware, that the train would tum- 
ble off a bridge into the river, but me be the only 
one drowned; and then I was scared most to 
pieces every time the train went over a bridge, 
and prayed that every one would be drowned but 
me. You had the last of the house, and you 
poked me off to auntie’s — so selfish and horrid — 
and you at home till the last moment. I kept 
saying ‘Now they’re taking up the sitting-room 
carpet.’ ‘ To-day my furniture, my own bed 
where I could sleep alone, is being packed.’ ‘ Now 
they’re taking down the parlor curtains.’ And it 
was your fault I was not there. What do you 
think I came home for, any way ? Because I had 
to see that house again, and that was how I lost 
the train. And when I got there, mother had 
been gone just fiv^ minutes, and I thought my 
heart would break, and I stood there on the side- 
walk and looked up to the windows and wondered 
if the policeman would put me in the lock-up if I 
crawled in through the kitchen window. I wasn’t 
afraid to go in alone — all alone. I had to see it. 


38 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

And the shutters were up — I had forgotten about 
them. And there stood Pat, and I never was so 
glad to see anybody in my life. I kissed him. 
Perhaps he thought I was crazy, but I don’t care. 
I made him unlock the door, and he went all over 
the house with me, from attic to cellar. And I 
did not cry in my own room, nor the big sitting- 
room, but when I got to the bath-room, I just sat 
down on the edge of the tub and cried as hard as 
I could.” 

And then she fell back flat again on the pillow, 
as though she had been shot. The upper button 
of her night-dress had somehow got wrenched off. 

‘‘ Why, Kitty — why, Kitty — why, Kitty — ” 

It was all Marion could utter. This the calm 
sister, who “never cared and never felt any- 
thing ” ? Whose comment on earthquakes, ava- 
lanches, and tornadoes would merely have been, 
“ Oh well, never mind. What difference does it 
make ” ? 

She fell asleep once more, at last, feeling that 
the world had indeed been turned upside down. 


CHAPTER II. 


GETTING SETTLED. 

The hall of the second story was big and airy, 
widening at one end into a space as large as a 
fair-sized room and terminating in an immense 
square window. It was to the imposing aspect of 
this window that Marion ascribed the fact that a 
stranger invariably selected theirs as the house at 
which he was at liberty to ring and inquire about 
the neighborhood, the price of land, the rent and 
casual statistics about the houses, for the place 
was new, and the houses frequently to let, — also 
for sale, but human credulity has its limits, and 
purchasers were rare. 

There was one odd circumstance about it. 
Once a family got there, it stayed. However fre- 
quent might be its removals from one house with 
“ To Let ” placarded on it to another similarly 
adorned, however it might scold about drainage, 
thin walls, and water-pipes ready to burst on the 
smallest provocation, and long to shake the dust 
39 


40 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


of the place from its feet, the spell had come upon 
it. It could move from square to square, but 
could not leave the checker-board. Dust is 
merely figurative. It was usually mud. 

It was but a little way from town ; but it might 
have been many miles distant, from the quiet and 
seclusion that reigned there. The whole site of 
the hamlet, so to speak, had once been a single 
estate, and those tenants who, with town-bred en- 
thusiasm, tried to cultivate the small plot of land 
belonging to each house, were apt to find, after 
struggling for a season or two, that it was situated 
on some hopelessly unproductive portion of the 
old place. According to the luck which at this 
period of their lives seemed detailed to watch over 
the Wares, their garden was on the site of the 
ancient driveway, and their cellar over an old-time 
spring. 

It was a Sleepy Hollow spot, fresh and pretty, 
consisting chiefly of two streets, bordered with 
trees. From the train, one could just catch a 
glimpse of the place, in a delicious little nest of 
blossoms and greenery, as one whirled by in the 
spring-time. Perhaps it was this tempting aspect 
that led so many at that season to come there 
house-hunting. Perhaps this inclination had its 


GETTING SETTLED. 


41 


root in some instinct of nature, such as develops 
in the spring in birds in gayer plumage, in young 
men in thoughts of love, and in servant-girls in 
the seeking of new situations. As with the first 
two evidences of a Universal Law, does some deep 
scientific truth underlie and connect them all? 

But the blossoms were a vain and hollow mock- 
ery, like everything else in Sleepy Hollow, and 
did not mean fruit — any more than the advertise- 
ments that set forth the advantages of the place 
so glowingly, meant truth. The houses had been 
built as a speculation, at the time investments in 
real estate were a mania. They were charming to 
look at, *well arranged and prettily finished in 
hard wood. They were pleasant to live in 
through the summer, being arranged with a view 
to ventilation. The same arrangements for fresh 
air unhappily continued through the winter, in- 
geniously contrived at cracks of windows that did 
not close, underneath doors that did not meet the 
sill, through walls of paper thinness, cellars with 
the windows put in on the principle of the round 
man in the square hole, and a cellar ceiling 
through which the winds of heaven played mer- 
rily with the carpets on the lower floor, waving 
them up and down in a manner to make anybody 


42 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


unaccustomed to such vagaries on the part of 
Wilton and Brussels, sea-sick. 

With a kindly eye to counteracting these defi- 
ciencies, the builder put a huge cylinder furnace 
in the middle of each cellar. As it was made of 
sheet tin, it let out the heat nicely. The only 
objection to this architectural masterpiece was 
that it unfitted the cellar for a place of storage, 
and did not warm the rooms above. Perhaps the 
pipes being made of the same tin as the furnace, 
with holes at the joints to farther facilitate the 
heating of the cellar, assisted the builder’s pur- 
pose. In finishing the houses, doors, blinds, 
wall-paper, furnaces, ranges, mouldings, — all were 
bought in lots and divided around. Sometimes 
they fitted, and sometimes they did not — usually 
the latter. Sometimes the wall-paper held out 
over the whole room, and frequently there was a 
corner where the bare wall showed. 

The Wares’ house was the last “finished.” So 
their furnace was the thinnest, their range gave 
the mininum amount of heat for the maximum 
amount of coal, their pipes were put in as it 
pleased Fate and the builder. A conflagration in 
Sleepy Hollow was a thing to be dreaded, for a 
divining rod would have been necessary to tell 


GETTING SETTLED, 


43 


where the water-pipes ran, though one general 
principle could be relied on. The water-pipes 
were where they could freeze the quickest, and 
the hot-air pipes at the greatest distance from them. 

The paper had also given out by the time the 
Wares’ house was reached, and, with the exception 
of the lower rooms, the walls were bare. The 
window-fastenings had also given out, so had bolts 
for back doors and keys for locks — which did not 
matter so much, as the bolts that were on, shot 
half an inch above or below the socket — and 
rivets for knobs that were perpetually coming off 
in the hands of dismayed callers, and fastenings 
for blinds that banged back and forth o’ nights, till 
the worn-out nerves of the inmates could endure 
no more, and, stripping off the blinds, they put 
them up attic. Also nails, and boards, and shin- 
gles, and clapboards, and window-glass, and plas- 
ter, and paint, and laths, and a few other essentials, 
were either lacking, misplaced, or imperfect. 

The drainage — which took the place of the 
weather as a subject of conversation — banded the 
inhabitants of the Hollow together as brothers in 
misfortune. In some estates one could descry 
the position of the cesspool on the front lawn, by 
the yellowed grass above it, sometimes it was 


44 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


in the little plot of land that lay behind each 
house, with a few rotten boards over it, con- 
structed on the plan of Jack the Giant-Killer’s 
trap for the Cornish giant. As the only giant 
ever heard of in that neighborhood was the one 
who threw his plum-pudding about so wildly, the 
object of this defence was not so clear. The 
Wares had the fairy-ring on the lawn. On the 
other side was commonly to be seen a cow, that 
had strayed in through the gateless gateway. 
The gate did not fit, owing to the path being an 
inch too high for it, and had been sent up attic to 
keep company with the blinds. It also afforded 
convenient egress and ingress, together with the 
holes in the hack fences, for the hens that wan- 
dered over the whole neighborhood and scratched 
up whatever had been coaxed to grow in drive- 
way or gravel-bed. 

The drains ran into a brook that meandered 
along a large field, and, in time of thaw or heavy 
rain, across the road, transforming it into a lake. 
It also frequently meandered into the cellars. If 
it had been Kuhleborn himself, it could not have 
been gifted with greater powers of ubiquity, 
growth, and disappearance. Finally it ran through 
a marsh behind the houses, and into a small pond 


GETTING SETTLED. 


45 


that in warm weather dried up enough to be an 
attractive summer resort for mosquitoes and flies, 
and in cold afforded an excellent skating-ground 
for the children. It also supplied ice for an 
enterprising ice-company. 

But when the houses were completed, Nemesis 
overtook the dishonest builder. Real estate, in- 
flated, burst. The speculation was a cumbrous 
one, and the speculator was the first person to oc- 
cupy a house in the Hollow. The settlement 
consisted of two streets, which, from the train, 
looked much alike. But in the minds of the 
dwellers therein, there was a vast difference, and, 
in point of fact, one street was wider, prettier, 
better kept than the other. The trees were thrift- 
ier, there were more attempts at cultivating the 
gardens. But the greatest difference was in the 
people themselves, for by some odd chance, or 
drawn together, perhaps, by far-reaching mutual 
attraction, all of the inhabitants of the one street, 
at some period or other of their lives, had “ seen 
better days.” As in the State’s Prison, no one 
had come there voluntarily. For which reason 
Garrick Street chose to turn up its nose at Kean 
Street, whose circumstances, such as they were, 
had never been anything but solvent. 


46 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Church, school, stores, the nearest village, all 
were a mile off, which entailed sundry inconven- 
iences, and resulted in a system of small borrow- 
ing, carried on through the afore-mentioned holes 
in the back fences. Not that matters would have 
been mended much had the butcher conducted 
his business nearer to them, for to the question 
“ What have you to-day ? ” the reply was invari- 
ably “ Mutton, ma’am ” ; while a suggestion that 
a change would be desirable was met in silence 
and with so sweet a smile that the housekeeper 
desisted, feeling she had been needlessly cruel 
and that the butcher’s lamblike demeanor had 
somehow been derived from intercourse with the 
animal he loved so well. Another peculiarity 
was that the price of his wares never bore any 
relation to their market value, except perhaps 
that of three to one. 

The large hall had been furnished with a 
lounge, two or three chairs, hassocks, a table and 
Mrs. Ware’s big family work-basket — if there 
were one article more than another that Marion 
always associated with her mother, it was her 
thimble — and here it was that Arthur, coming 
out one afternoon, after they had been in their 
new home about a week, found them. With 


GETTING SETTLED, 


47 


manly condescension, he pronounced it “ a very 
decent sort of place,” and emphasized his appro- 
bation by stretching himself at full length on the 
lounge, with the biggest pillow he could confiscate 
from the adjoining rooms. 

“ And what sort of people are about here ? I 
suppose you’ve seen them all by this time,” he 
went on, helping himself from the basket of 
apples which Kitty had gathered from the only 
fruitful tree of the four in their little garden. 

Marion settled back in her big chair and gave 
herself up to the dear delight of talking. 

“ Mrs. Eliot and Mrs. Drew were here together, 
as they usually are, like substance and shadow. 
Mrs. Eliot is the substance. She is the wife of 
the man who built the houses, you know, and is 
an earnest, cultivated woman, who, if she had 
more children, would have fewer theories. Her 
special hobby is education, and she is doing her 
best to elevate the community to which heaven 
and the mutability of real estate have consigned 
her. I don’t wonder she thinks something ails 
the intelligence of people who have taken her 
husband’s houses,” for Marion had been making 
sundry unpleasant discoveries concerning their 
domicile. “She believes in Woman’s Suffrage, 


48 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

Graham gems, and Agnosticism, and has taken a 
Japanese youth into her home to educate in all 
three, which perhaps accounts for the settled 
melancholy of his countenance. Mr. Eliot, since 
his failure, has subsided into Mrs. Eliot’s hus- 
band. He has innocent blue eyes, confiding, 
rather shy manners, and blushes like a girl if you 
look steadily at him. How he contrives to wear 
such a guileless countenance with the load of 
these abominable houses on his conscience, is more 
than I can fathom. Mrs. Drew is Mrs. Eliot 
caricatured. Her chronic state is to be ‘just out’ 
of something. She sent here for a sheet of paper 
and a spool of black silk before the carpets were 
down. Yesterday she borrowed two flat-irons and 
the tongs. She never has ‘ time ’ for anything ; 
and as returning is one of the things she hasn’t 
time for, I shall shut down on one of the princi- 
ples of Universal Suffrage.” 

“Who else?” suggested Arthur, as Marion 
paused in wrathful recollection. “ Go ahead,” 
which his sister was perfectly willing to do, for, if 
there were one particular subject her keen tongue 
loved, it was the little weaknesses of her neigh- 
bors. 

“ Well, there is a retired minister, a Mr. Dun- 


GETTING SETTLED. 


49 


can, who has dyspepsia and a son. In conse- 
quence of which afflictions, he belongs to the 
Concord School of Philosophy. The boy is the 
one young man of the place, and realizes his im- 
portance. Then there is a Miss Faulkner, who is 
extremely pretty, though bad style, and with a 
divine voice, — Heaven’s merciful compensation 
to her for deficiencies of what she is pleased to 
call her mind. By what I could gather from her 
conversation, her idea of wit consists in throwing 
things at her friends’ heads. There is an old gen- 
tleman, too, named Dysart. He called twice, and 
I am constantly meeting him on the train. He 
has taken an unfortunate fancy to me, and says I 
resemble his daughter. If her conception of 
humor is like her papa’s, I trust the resemblance 
ceases there. He gets off the worst jokes, the 
longest and most pointless stories, the poorest 
puns ever perpetrated ; and I, out of respect to 
gray hairs, feel compelled to smile, though it is 
often more than human nature can bear. There 
is no severer proof of one’s friendship than ap- 
pearing to enjoy a poor joke ; while to be com- 
pelled to laugh at that which does not move the 
soul to mirth is an insult to one’s understanding.” 
r “Don’t get into the habit of saying sharp 


60 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


things, Marion. There’s no quality so detestable 



There were times when Arthur, like most very 
young men, felt it his duty to train his sister in 
the way she should go ; but his habit of encourag- 
ing her drolleries also, unfortunately, encouraged 
her habit of sarcastic comment. 

“ Now go ahead,” he would say, “whom have 
you seen lately ? ” And Marion would run on, 
almost uninterruptedly, for half an hour, more 
flattered than she would have acknowledged by the 
request and the subsequent attention, for beyond 
all others did she respect Arthur’s intellect and 
keen tongue. So, unconsciously, he fostered one 
of her worst faults, she holding herself well re- 
warded by his short laugh, or the twitch of the 
half-hidden lip. 

After love and health, poverty has no greater 
alleviation than a keen sense of humor, but, 
unsoftened by charity and joined to a ready dis- 
cernment of character, it becomes a dangerous 
gift. 

“I very rarely do say ill-natured things,” re- 
joined Marion, with the pleasant unconsciousness 
of her little failings that we all have. “ For one 
thing, I always have an uncomfortable sensation 


GETTING SETTLED. 


51 


that the people I am speaking of are under the 
chairs and tables, listening. Come out, Mrs. 
Drew,” flapping the table-cover. “ And I never 
say anything that is simply malicious, for that is 
sure to recoil some day, in some way, on him who 
says it. But still, if the malice is witty, it ought 
to be forgiven for its cleverness.” 

“ It’s not by the person that’s hit. And there 
is no reputation better worth having than that of 
never speaking ill of any one.” 

“I know, — like Ned Keith,” said Marion, 
softly. She looked thoughtful a moment, and 
Arthur, having finished his brotherly lecture, 
turned to Kitty. 

“ And why is my little Kitty so silent ? What 
can have happened to bring that cloud to her 
usually serene brow? It is not possible that 
apples — ” for, if Kitty had a weakness, it was for 
the delicious unripe fruit, and these were just at 
the right stage of hardness and crisp juiciness. 
Beyond a briefly courteous, “ Hullo, have an 
apple?” she had vouchsafed no contribution to 
the conversation, and this might mean either one 
of the long fits of dreamy silence to which the 
girl was subject, or that she and Marion had just 
indulged in one of those altercations that, like 


52 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


Goethe’s definition of a fairy-tale, led at once to 
everything and nothing. 

A new and fertile field of dispute had opened 
between them — the situation and aspect of things 
in their old home, and a recent discussion as to 
the exact location of the coal-bin, had been added 
to the original cause of her gloomy silence. Re- 
garding memory, as everything else, the two 
clashed. Marion, like the majority of quick- 
witted people, had a poor one ; but in that, as in 
everything else, she was as confident the one- 
hundredth time, as though she had not been alto- 
gether wrong the preceding ninety-nine. Kitty’s 
memory was a singular one. With absolutely no 
power to grasp some things, it was yet amazingly 
retentive of the minutest details in others. It 
was pre-eminently what Hamerton calls a “ selec- 
tive memory,” though on what principle it did its 
selecting, not Hamerton, nor anybody else, could 
have told ; unless, perhaps, on that of choosing 
what appealed to the imaginative faculty, — what 
was utterly useless. 

It was Marion who, with cheerful readiness, 
volunteered the explanation of her sister’s silence. 

‘‘She don’t like it because she’s got to go 
to school. She thinks she’s grown up since 


GETTING SETTLED. 53 

we’ve been out here, and that her education is 
finished.” 

“ I don’t see any use in it, any way,” began 
Kitty, argumentatively, addressing herself studi- 
ously to her brother. “If I did, I should not 
mind it so much, or if I could keep on at Miss 
Graham’s. But I hate a public school, and every- 
thing will be new and hard and horrid, and I 
don’t see why I need go.” 

“ Why, my child, you surely do not think your 
education is completed at your tender age? We 
want our Kitty to grow up a credit and ornament 
to her family, as she is sure to do, if she gives her 
budding talents fair play.” 

But Kitty, unmoved by her brother’s chaff, 
went on in her usual even tones : — 

“ I don’t know any of the girls, and I am simply 
heart-broken at the idea of leaving Lulu and 
Gertie. I don’t mind Gertie so much, for I 
always had a feeling she was not a true friend 
since she told me T was proud' of my eye-lashes. 
But Lulu is so dear and stylish, it is a terrible 
wrench.” 

“ I read your anguish in your voice.” 

“ I think I might study at home ; I never 
thought of going to school, or I wouldn’t have 


64 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


come home in such a hurry. Can’t I study here, 
mother?” appealing for the twentieth time to 
Mrs. Ware, who had just come into the hall and 
seated herself where she could look at Arthur. 
She knew no inequality, she said, in her love for 
her children, but one always had a different feel- 
ing toward the first-born. 

To Kitty’s appeal she was obdurate. There 
were no limits to her indulgence when it was her 
own care or sacrifice that was in question ; but 
when it was her children’s good that was con- 
cerned, not Gibraltar itself was more immovable. 

“Besides,” added Arthur, as his mother fin- 
ished, “ you had altogether too much of j^our own 
way at Miss Graham’s, and the result is sad for a 
thinking person to contemplate. Don’t you want 
to grow up and be a nice clever little girl ? ” in a 
tone suited to a child of five. 

“I should like to have you leave me alone. 
And I do not know that French and algebra will 
make a person any cleverer than surgery and medi- 
cine do.” 

“ Ah, that is rather good. The result of early 
culture and example is showing itself. Keep on, 
my Kitty, and we shall yet be proud of you.” 

“ I’ve studied algebra a year now, and it’s all x 


GETTING SETTLED. 55 

to me; and I always forget the little French I 
know in vacation, so there is no use keeping on 
studying,” argued Kitty. 

“ The younger girls never half studied, and 
particularly Kitty’s set,” put in Marion, who had 
had the reputation of being the cleverest girl at 
Miss Graham’s. “ She’ll have to study, whether 
she wants to or not, at a public school.” 

The look on Kitty’s face made the truth of this 
proposition doubtful. 

“ Anything else is impossible,” concluded 
Arthur, putting the question in a reasonable light. 
“We cannot afford to pay Miss Graham, and 
you are much too young to think of leaving 
school. Home study never amounts to anything, 
and certainly would not with you. And this 
school is conducted remarkably well.” 

“I sha’nt learn anything. I cannot learn. I 
do not know what is the matter with me some- 
times,” pursued Kitty. 

Arthur made a gesture as though he could 
explain but forebore from tenderness. Marion 
laughed scornfully. 

“ The loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind/' 
observed Kitty, addressing the air. 

“ You could hardly go to school every day and 


66 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


not learn something, though only by accident. 
Something will stick, necessarily,” said her brother. 

“I can,” returned Kitty, confidently. 

“ No, my dear, not even you. It is only in this 
last forlorh hope that we send you.” 

“I sometimes think,” pursued the girl, dream- 
ily, “ that it is due to the fact that I was origin- 
ally intended for a genius, but, like the cake I 
tried to make on All-Hallow E’en, the ingredients 
are all there, but, somehow, they are not put 
together right. I really like to cook, but as every- 
thing I do turns out wrong, I am not encourgead 
to keep on. What is that, now, but the creative 
faculty at work in another channel? The least 
suggestive word will send me off into a dream, my 
imagination seems to be set a-spinning of itself. I 
get to thinking of a thing, of being another 
person, till — ” she broke off suddenly. It was 
not often she said even thus much, and even 
now she had been more thinking aloud than 
consciously telling her inmost thoughts. Not to 
'^anybody did she tell them, or anything, except 
— her hand crept up to her locket as Marion 
laughed ; yes, and Arthur, too, as he quoted, 

“ ‘ The genius and the faculty divine, 

Yet lacking the accomplishment of verse.’ ” 


CHAPTER III. 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 

It was a very large school, with four classes. 
Each class was subdivided into lettered sections, 
in charge of a special teacher ; there were two or 
three of these sections in each room. The girls, 
on entering, were placed in these subdivisions 
according to ability. Kitty was in A ; which was 
owing less to superior scholarship than to the fact 
that there happened to be a seat vacant there. 
The only reason she did not end in Z was because 
the number of girls did not hold out so far. 

Section A was in charge of the chemistry 
teacher, to whom, in the first instance, Kitty took 
a dislike, because she would ask her how it hap- 
pened she was late, and insisted on a written 
excuse for the tardiness. It was an inquiry as 
superfluous as it was rude ; for why she was 
always behind time was a question to be classed 
with the riddle of life itself. Miss Graham had 

never considered it necessary to make such inqui- 
57 


68 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


lies, and Miss Graham’s virtues had brightened 
amazingly of late. 

Having made up her mind that she should dis- 
like everything connected with the school, the 
natural consequence was that it grew more and 
more distasteful every day, with no more reason 
than that she and work were always at variance. 
The rules were very few and reasonable, and hardly 
more stringent than those of the late private estab- 
lishment. But they were rules that were made to 
be kept, wherein lay a difference. It had always 
been considered a good school, but it was just 
during the four years that Kitty was there that it 
had a particularly high reputation — not that she 
added to its excellence, but it was then under the 
direction of a man whose character, as shown in 
the principles on which he guided the school, and 
those he inculcated in his pupils, bore a strong 
resemblance to Arnold of Rugby. 

There was no coercion at lessons, and no pun- 
ishment if they were not properly learned. The 
girls came there to learn, and study and scholar- 
ship were to be prized for themselves alone. So 
far as was practicable, lectures, with notes, were 
given the preference, rather than a text-book. 
The girls were expected to look up information 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


69 


for themselves, taking the lecture-notes as their 
guide. There was neither rank nor reward, and 
only one honor, connected with essays, to the 
writing of which much importance was attached. 
Of behavior nothing was ever said. They were 
young ladies, and ladylike deportment was taken 
for granted. 

But this system, while it worked well in the 
main, and fostered high feeling and scholarship 
amongst the class most capable of them, certainly 
did give a chance of escape to the idler and 
dunce. Kitty was both. And here was one of the 
reasons that, before she had been in school a week, 
seemed likely to prove the falsity of Arthur’s 
theory, that some knowledge must perforce, bur- 
fashion, stick. Again, the section she was in was 
an unusually large one, and she was sometimes 
overlooked. Then there was her own unruffled 
calm, that enabled her to present an unembar- 
rassed appearance though wild fears tugged at 
her heart. Something, too, may have been for- 
given because the girl had a fund of odd miscella- 
neous information, by which she came out bril- 
liantly at times. She was so rarely seen with a 
book in her hand that it was a mystery how she 
had obtained these bits of information, unless, like 


60 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


Joey Ladle, she had taken them in at the pores. 
Absolutely incapable, as it seemed, of remember- 
ing dry details, she instantly grasped anything 
that struck her fancy; so that often on merely 
reading a lesson over, — and it was well if she did 
even that, — she would be able to answer the 
question that came to her. But beyond the mere 
text little was learned, nothing thoroughly under- 
stood. 

She blundered in French, her exercises were 
copied or neglected, and her translation was in- 
spiration ; for a word, a hint was enough, and she 
would read off a whole paragraph in good, smooth 
English, with only the drawback of its being noth- 
ing like the original; her pronunciation was 
such that, finally, in excess of pain, the gray- 
haired old professor ceased to call upon her. 
She gave impossible answers in algebra, and her 
examples were either altogether wrong or copied. 
In literature she succeeded better, for there her 
interest was aroused. 

Of course all this was not allowed to pass un- 
noticed. But it was breath thrown away for the 
chemistry teacher to talk seriously, to scold, to 
threaten to degrade her to the lowest form. 
They did not know about it at home. Kitty’s 


THE NEW SCHOOL, 


61 


scholarship had never been considered remark- 
able, and the demand for notes to excuse her tar- 
dinesses was the only thing that ever caused 
comment. But, then, Kitty was always late. It 
was as much a part of her as her nose or her big 
gray eyes. Arthur once in a while took it upon 
himself to question her, but more for his own 
amusement than her profit. 

She was invariably late. Not very late, but a 
little, provokingly so ; just enough to give the 
idea she could perfectly well have been on time 
had she chosen. Mornings, after the long recess 
at noon, after the five-minute recess that closed 
every hour, at recitations, on the days when the 
w’hole school assembled for prayers in the large 
hall at the top of the building, she would put in 
an appearance five minutes after the appointed 
time, with a nicety that must have been the final 
straw to her whole atrocious conduct. 

With all, there was a growing consciousness of 
something else, she dared tell no one, not even 
Gertie Meredith, the repository of most of her 
secrets. “Maybe it’s softening of the brain,” 
thought the poor girl ; “ it wouldn’t do to let 
Arthur know.” And this forlorn secret was an 
absolute incapacity, quite apart from her own 


62 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

will, to concentrate her attention on anything 
personally uninteresting. It was not alone at 
school that this peculiarity came into play. In 
church, always; if she had been a heathen, it 
could not be more unqualifiedly said that she had 
never heard a sermon in her life. In a roomful 
of company, whose conversation was on topics 
foreign to her ; in hearkening, perforce, to a dull 
or over-long story, her attention would be miles 
away from the spoken words, that yet gently 
jogged along the delicious train of thought, as the 
motion of a railway carriage has power to send 
some people into delightful reveries, the jog-jog 
keeping the brain-mechanism in gentle, involun- 
tary action. For much of it, Kitty was, perhaps, 
not to blame. But there was a great deal that 
would, no doubt, have been of interest had she 
previously bestowed any time on it ; so the lack 
could hardly be wondered at. 

But if, in French, instead of being in the forest 
with Paul and Virginia, she was in the park skat- 
ing with Lulu and Gertie ; if, in algebra, she was 
thinking of the matinee to which Arthur had just 
sent her and Marion tickets, and “ Miles Standish” 
somehow suggested her new winter dress, it was 
with chemistry that this peculiarity was in full 


THE NEW SCHOOL, 


63 


force. It was not 'only that she did not study ; if 
she had been stone-deaf and totally blind, she 
could not have been more oblivious of what it 
was all about. From the beginning to the end of 
the year, she learnt but one thing — that the 
symbol for water is HgO. Her grasp of this fact 
was owing less to Eliot and Storer than to Jules 
Verne. 

Urged by unhappy thoughts of examination, — 
ah, they had had no examinations at Miss Gra- 
ham’s ! — she did sometimes try to keep her 
thoughts on the lesson ; but of what use was 
it ? — what could those mysterious signs and sym- 
bols on the blackboard mean ? The questions, 
the answers and explanations gradually became 
the mere background to a dreamy succession of 
pleasant pictures, in which H2O had no part. 
“ Miss Ware ! ” called the teacher. The struggle 
had been in vain. The induced current of 
thought had set in, and carried Kitty off to dream- 
land. 

What wonder was it that there was no love in 
her heart for that chemistry teacher, though yet 
the dislike was in a kind of high-minded, imper- 
sonal fashion, as toward the innocent cause of a 
most iniquitous effect ? What wonder was it that 


64 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


Arthur, in those moments when he inquired into 
the progress of her education, made her speech- 
lessly miserable by invariably selecting chemistry 
as the branch upon which to examine her ? It set 
her in an agony of fear lest her total and astound- 
ing ignorance should be discovered. Not that she 
minded so much the revelation of her lack of 
knowledge, as that strange inability of hers to 
concentrate her attention — surely that meant 
something lacking in her brain. 

The only mitigating circumstance about the 
whole was — Miss Hallo ck. Miss Hallock was 
the head teacher in the room, and with her she 
had fallen instantly and deeply in love. It was 
nothing else — the enthusiastic admiration that a 
girl, and particularly an imaginative one, some- 
times will feel for a woman older and stronger 
than herself. In this instance, it would have 
been surprising had the love been returned ; yet 
it was honest, genuine love, and, as such, nothing 
to be ashamed of, though this, as all her deeper 
feeling, she concealed with the utmost care. For 
the rest, she lived in a state of half-somnambulic 
indifference to realities, her only answer when 
confronted with them, “ O well, never mind. 
What difference does it make ? ” 


THE J^EW SCHOOL, 


65 


In regard to Miss Hallock, one reason why she 
never expressed in any way her affection may 
have been an undefined consciousness that poorly 
learned lessons and inattention were neither the 
way to show respect or liking, nor to win them. 
Many, the majority of the girls, were attracted in 
the same way. Miss Hallock being the popular 
teacher of the whole class. Deservedly so, with 
the personal magnetism and earnestness that ac- 
complish so much. 

Toward the end of the month there was a com- 
position to be written, and Kitty saw herself 
compelled to choose one of three paths, — to 
evade it altogether, to spend five minutes over it 
and pronounce it finished, or to copy it. The first 
path was tried, and for a week her excuses were 
many and ingenious. But headache, weak eyes, a 
visit to the dentist’s and consequent derangemept 
of the nervous system — the list was exhausted, 
and she was told, in a tone none of the girls ever 
thought of disobeying, that Miss Hallock would 
expect to receive the composition the following 
Monday. 

So, much against her inclination, the second 
course was adopted, and, with many groans, she 
curled herself up in one corner of the low, roomy 


66 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

old sofa in the sitting-room, with a plate of cara- 
mel for refreshment, and with her cat in her lap 
for hugs and strokes when the exigencies of edu- 
cation needed the support of affection. She had 
also supplied herself, as an after-thought, with a 
dull, stubby pencil, which she nibbled in the inter- 
vals of caramel, a big sheet of paper, and an old 
geography, and once in a while made spasmodic 
and futile dabs at the foolscap, while she declared 
the subject was the most impossible ever devised. 

“ Here I’ve spent an hour over it already, and 
this is every word I can think of,” said she, dejec- 
tedly, displaying the paper to Marion, who read 
aloud in a scoffing voice, 

“ ‘ YOUTH. 

“ ‘ Youth is very beautiful. It is lovely to be 
young. When one is young it is the best part of 
life. Kitty Ware. Katharine Ware,”’ a dozen 
times and with a great variety of flourishes. 

“ Splendid I You seem to be on the high-road 
to success. Don’t let me interrupt you.” 

“Not that I think so,” pursued Kitty. “It is 
mere poetic license. There is nothing very beau- 
tiful about a time when one has to write composi- 
tions. It is far lovelier to be old and palsied. 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


67 


Somehow, do you know, all those sentences seem 
to bear a family resemblance to one another.” 

“ I think they do,” laughing. “ You might add 
that youth is the spring-time of life, and wind 
up with the remark that youth is the halcyon 
season.” 

“I might. Only I don’t know what halcyon 
means. Don’t go. Do help me, Marion. It’s 
ridiculous, expecting me to write an essay, when 
I never could even write a letter. Can’t you just 
suggest a little something?” persuasively. 

They had had a lively battle that afternoon, be- 
cause their views failed to harmonize on the exact 
time the postman arrived. But that was no reason 
why Kitty should not ask for help. 

“ I’d help you if I could,” said Marion, and so 
she would, the moment after one of their hottest 
disputes, — perhaps, like most open, generous 
natures, all the more readily then. “ But I don’t 
see any way. You don’t half try, Kitty. If you 
were to put away the candy, tip that horrid cat 
off your lap, and go to work in your own room, 
you’d succeed better.” She spoke kindly, but 
Kitty, with her usual indifference, only replied : — 

“Don’t mind the wicked things she says of 
you, my Beauty,” grasping all four feet of her 


68 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


beloved pet, and wobbling the dear animal, muff- 
fashion, against her face. 

Beauty did not resent it. She never resented 
anything, but kept on purring and looking pretty. 
Perhaps one reason why Kitty was so much at- 
tached to her cat was that there was a great deal 
in their natures that was congenial. The same 
with Peep, who never achieved anything more 
than a few feeble chirps, but who was one of the 
prettiest and most amiable of canaries, eating and 
drinking his allowance of seed and water in bliss- 
ful disregard of the fact that he was not earning 
his board and lodging. 

“It’s easy enough,” continued Marion, to 
whom writing was a pleasure. “The subject is 
very simple, and there is no earthly reason why 
you can’t manage it.” For, being easy to her, she 
had no conception that it might not be to other 
people. To look at a thing from another’s stand- 
point, even to allow that there was another stand- 
point, was something to which Marion had not yet 
attained. 

Scrunch, scrunch, and murmurs of “ Oh, you 
pretty kitten,” from the sofa. 

“ I wonder if I could do anything with it. It 
seems so long since I’ve written an essay. Let me 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


69 


try,” and Kitty gladly relinquished pencil and 
paper, and devoted herself to more congenial occu- 
pations, watching at intervals Marion’s rapidly 
moving hand with mingled envy and respect. 

“ There, how is that ? ” asked the scribe, pres- 
ently, and she read aloud the bright little essay 
produced with so little labor. It was decidedly 
better than the average school-girl composition ; 
she had taken up the youth of the world and 
written a pretty, fresh little story. Kitty went 
into raptures. 

“ It’s lovely ! O Marion, do let me keep it. 
Do, do. I never can write a word myself, and I 
shall be disgraced if I don’t bring in something. 
I’ve tried till I feel nervous prostration coming 
on. I’m a born dunce and shall be to the end of 
my days. Please,” and Kitty’s eyes and voice 
could be very pleading when their owner chose. 

“ Keep it ? Of course not ! ” and the elder 
girl looked her honest indignation. “You ought 
to be ashamed, Kitty, to propose such a mean, de- 
ceitful thing.” 

“ Keep it yourself, then, and see your sister dis- 
graced,” cried Kitty, in tragic yet even tones. 

“ You seem calm enough about it.” 

“ It is the calmness of despair.” 


70 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Five minutes passed. Kitty had extended her- 
self full length on the sofa and had let the plate 
slide to the floor. No matter if the candy matted 
itself into the carpet. Somebody would see to 
that. Perhaps Maggie; perhaps mother. Cer- 
tainly not Kitty. No thought for others. Yes, 
there was a good deal of truth in what Marion so 
often said. 

“If you ever half tried to do anything,” began 
the latter, presently. “ But you go through life 
grasping ideas and duties as an Irish girl grasps a 
plate.” 

“ It’s hateful and disobliging not to do it.” 

“ It’s mean and underhand to do it.” 

“You were just saying you’d help me if you 
could. I knew you didn’t mean it.” 

“I’m not in the habit of saying what I don’t 
mean ! And I don’t act lies any more than I tell 
them ! ” 

It looked like another battle. Not so. Kitty 
had an end in view and she meant to gain it. 
She also was pretty sure she knew the way, so 
contented herself, instead of another blow, with a 
subdued : — 

“ H’m.” Then, a little later : — 

“ It’s such a lovely composition. If I could only 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


71 


write like that, I should not need to ask help. It 
would be sure to be the one to be read in the hall. 
Well, no matter; I don’t suppose it makes any 
difference, one thing more or less,” thinking of 
the lonesome H2O. “I don’t see what I’m to 
do, though.” 

“ If I consented, you’d be sure to be found out. 
They would know in a moment that you did not 
write this.” 

“No, they wouldn’t, because, don’t you see, I 
have never written anything, and they have noth- 
ing with which to compare it. They would only 
think I am a very clever girl — with cleverness, 
possibly, all turned into one channel — and will 
reproach themselves for having misunderstood 
me. 

“ Not even if you could tease Emerson into 
writing essays for you, remember, must you ask 
such a thing of me again.” 

“ Never ! ” knowing the battle was won. 

“ Well, then ! ” reluctantly still, but with some- 
thing of the feeling that a writer has — that to 
merely write a thing is not enough, the world 
must have it; and then it was pleasant to have 
her clever writing admired, even if she were not 
known as its author. Kitty had struck the right 


72 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


chord. Conversely, there was no surer path to 
Marion’s dislike — and she could dislike very 
fervently — than to give her cause to suspect she 
was not liked and admired. “ I think you will be 
sorry for it, though, Kitty, in one way or another ; 
maybe in a way you have no idea of now.” 

But her sister gave no heed to that, as, paper in 
hand, she ran joyously up stairs and proceeded to 
copy out the essay in her best writing, without a 
thought that it was indeed “a mean, deceitful 
thing to do.” So the third attempt was blessed 
with success, as all third attempts are said to be. 

. The next week the composition was returned 
with a pencilled note on the margin, “ To be read 
in the hall ” ; which meant that it had been act- 
ually selected as the best in Kitty’s room, and was 
to be read before the assembled school on the fol- 
lowing Friday. This was considered a great 
honor, and it was much to Miss Hallock’s surprise 
that Miss Ware absolutely refused to read her 
essay, entreating with such evident earnestness, 
though with no other reason than that “ she did not 
want to,” that the teacher consented at last to let 
her off, at the same time kindly assuring her that 
she really regretted her unwillingness, for the 
composition was so unusually good, she should 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


73 


have liked the girls to hear it; which praise, 
totally undeserved though it was, made guilty 
Kitty speechlessly happy. 

The deceit had not troubled her in the least till 
then. It did not exactly trouble her now, only to 
have the essay read next Friday was a length to 
which she could not go. Perhaps — it is to be 
hoped — that it was a germ of honor, which, 
though allowing her to escape trouble by a decep- 
tion, bad enough anywhere, but doubly so in that 
school, would not allow her to gain profit or dis- 
tinction thereby. Or, it was the old story of 
straining at the gnat. Or, perhaps — and this is 
the likeliest suggestion of all — Kitty’s conscience 
was an intermittent one. 

She told Marion what had been said, and it had 
its influence, when, the week after, for composi- 
tions were written every fortnight, she again 
begged her sister for help. It was given this 
time, with but little reluctance, in the form of a 
bright paper on Sir Roger de Coverley, and Mar- 
ion quieted her conscience with the argument that 
as Kitty could not any way do her task, there 
was no especial harm in doing it for her. And, 
then, it was such fun to write ! 

When the essays were returned, there was 


74 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


again that pencilled line on the margin. And 
whether it was by this time that Kitty found her- 
self able to swallow the gnat, or her conscience 
was in its quiescent stage, she had nothing to say 
in objection except to beg that she might not read 
it herself. It was more than she would have been 
willing to undertake to have stood on that plat- 
form, before that dizzy roomful of faces, had the 
essay been honestly her own. To have done it 
under the circumstances — she thought of 
Ananias, shivered at the idea, and would have 
mounted the steps -with the same certainty of 
perishing as though they had been those of the 
scaffold. 

There is a pretty fairy-story of a boy who, find- 
ing an elf s cap and putting it on, was enabled to 
see and dictate terms to the tiny creature thus re- 
vealed to mortal vision ; the boy’s first injunction 
was that the elf should do all his school-work for 
him. The plan worked admirably for some time, 
and Jacky had the double pleasure of doing noth- 
ing and getting all the credit of the clever elf s 
work. But, unfortunately, one day he lost the 
fairy cap. The elf was watching his opportunity, 
and, grasping it, went his homeward way, rejoicing 
at the release from his long thraldom. 


THE NEW SCHOOL. 


75 


His whilom master was in a sad dilemma ; for it 
was examination-day, and everybody had come to 
hear and see the brilliant Jacky. What was their 
astonishment when the boy could not answer a 
question put to him ; his cleverness was found to 
be a sham, his ignorance and stupidity beyond 
credence ! Nobody rightly understood, of course, 
how it had all happened. But stupid folk tried to 
account for it by saying the boy had overtasked 
himself, and his brain had given way at the last 
moment. But, then, some people always will have 
a rationalistic theory to account for all the charm- 
ing fairy-tales. 

Kitty had read this pleasant story, and it had 
taken immovable lodgement in her mind. But if 
she saw any resemblance between her own career 
and Jacky’s, or drew unpleasant deductions from 
the disastrous close of his, she dismissed vagrant 
fears with a “ O well, never mind. What differ- 
ence does it make ? ” 


CHAPTER IV. 


Cinderella’s ball. 


“ Kitty ! ” 

No answer. 

“ Kit — tj — Kit — tee ! 

Still no answer. 

Up came quick-footed Marion, to whom running 
always seemed so much more natural than walk- 
ing, two steps at a time, to find her sister reclining 
on the lounge, looking at the pictures in Wide 
Awake, which was as far as love of literature was 
ever seen to carry her. 

“You heard me — you know you did,” said 
Marion, indignantly. 

“ So I did,” replied Kitty, blandly. “ And the 
reason I pretended I did not, was because I was 
afraid you wanted me to do something.” 

Her frankness was sometimes so complete as to 
be disarming, as it now was to Marion, who, how- 
ever, retained enough of wrath* to say : — 

“ I’ve a good mind not to give it to you.” 

76 


CINBEBELLA' S BALL. 


7T 


“ There is quite a heavy penalty attached to 
meddling with the United States mail,” suggested 
Kitty. “ They have nice-looking bread in prison, 
but I don’t believe you’ll like coffee sweetened 
with molasses. You won’t miss your room so 
much, because it looks now more like a prison-cell 
than my lady’s chamber.” 

It was as much her room as Marion’s, so the 
reason is enshrouded in darkness why the latter 
should have looked upon this as a personal af- 
front. 

“ It would look better if you ever did anything 
toward keeping it clean ; and not always leave 
your boots in the exact centre of the room and 
expect somebody else to pick up your dresses. 
You can put what you like on your own bureau, 
but have the kindness not to leave the bird-cage 
and your muff on mine ! ” Kitty’s careless ways 
were a perpetual thorn in the flesh to her tidy 
sister. It was seldom the latter entered their room 
that she did not find on her bureau articles Kitty 
had coolly removed from her own always crowded 
one. “There, take your note!” and Marion tossed 
it to where her sister lay outstretched. Part of 
the eastern motto was Kitty’s: “It is better to sit 
than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit.” 


78 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Marion betook herself to the prison-cell, looked 
her own invitation over again, and finished read- 
ing the accompanying letter : — 

“ won’t fail to be there, on that account, if 

no other, for I do want you to meet him. He’s 
the most altogether splendid man I ever met. 
No, my dear, it is not a smash. I only stand afar 
off and do him reverence. There is something 
about him — well, something indescribable. He 
is not like anybody I ever saw before. Not that 
he talks or acts unlike other people, but you have 
a feeling all the time that he could. I’m not 
given to raving over every new man, like some 
girls we know, but with him — well, wait till you 
see him. He is the one, you know, that all the 
girls were crazy over last summer at Mt. Desert 
and of whom Molly Keith said that pretty thing : 

“ ‘ If he had lived in the fifteenth century, men 
would have called him “ the Strong ” and women 
“ the Gentle.” But he lives in the nineteenth, and 
so both call him Doctor.’ 

“ I am going to wear the pale pink cashmere I 
showed you. I found the loveliest lace for it. 
Lucy could not match the blue silk, after all, so 
she has had a new one, too — a paler shade. It 


CINBEEELLA^S BALL. 


79 


was well she could not, for the other was a regular 
old maid’s color. Make Arthur come. Love to 
your mother. Yours, Annie Meredith.” 

“ It is not a big affair. W e only mean to cele- 
brate New Year’s Eve a little.” 

Marion laid the note down with a sigh and a 
feeling of dissatisfaction. The sigh was for the 
past, that had held for her also pale cashmere 
and new silks ; the unpleasant twinge, for the fu- 
ture and the old silk that had been worn so many 
times, and was so exactly the shade of that con- 
demned one of Lucy’s. “An old maid’s color!” 
She kept thinking of the words. 

So the occasion began in envy and dissatisfac- 
tion, that were to increase in arithmetical progres- 
sion. She spent the rest of that day and the 
greater part of the next looking over the silk, 
pulling out ruffles, retying the big sash bow, 
standing contemplatively before the bureau in the 
spare-room, trying to decide which she preferred, 
a square or a pointed neck, and coming to the 
conclusion that she hated both. A decision due 
in part, perhaps, to the peculiar quality the spare- 
room glass had of broadening and squattening a 
person, much like the convex side of a spoon. 


80 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


It was enough to make any one depressed. The 
only thing in which she could find full satisfaction 
was mother’s lovely thread lace. Marion had the 
feeling for lace that most girls have for jewelry. 

Kitty, meantime, lay on the lounge. It was 
vacation, which was one reason more why she 
should not work. Her own white cashmere, with 
the cream-colored ribbons and the one creamy, 
fluffy feathei: that was to take the place of the 
usual brown bow on her braid, would all be on 
the bed for her when the evening came. Truly, 
there seems ground for the belief that there is a 
Providence who looks after the incapables. 
Arthur was out the next afternoon. 

“ You’re going, of course ? ” began Marion. 
“ The Merediths’ german ? ” 

He was on the lounge, smoking. She had just 
put away her dress, and was trying not to heed 
the whisper, “ An old maid’s color.” 

“ I am not.” 

“ I’d like to know why not.” 

“ Got a patient.” 

“Perhaps,” suggested his sister, grimly, “if 
you were to leave minute and written directions 
with Dr. Coutts, he might be able to pull him 
through one evening.” 


CINBEBELLA' S BALL. 81 

“I’ve outgrown my dress coat,” shifting his 
ground, gracefully and unabashed. 

“You don’t look noticeably bigger than you 
did at the last play of the club.” 

“No; such is the admirable symmetry of my 
form, it is not visible to the naked eye.” 

“ Annie Meredith said particularly she wanted 
you to come.” 

“Much obliged; but I don’t go much to the 
Merediths’. Mrs. Meredith is first-rate. Her 
husband would do better if he studied his gram- 
mar more and his dictionary less. Lucy chatters, 
and Annie is forever pestering me with invita- 
tions to affairs I don’t want to go to. I don’t 
feel particularly well acquainted with Gertie, for 
all I ever see of her is the back of her head.” 

“ She is in love with you,” explained Gertie’s 
friend, fully aware she was betraying a treasured 
secret, “ and that is why she always runs when 
she sees j-ou coming.” 

What farther surprising developments might 
have been revealed of the youngest Miss Mere- 
dith’s unrequited passion, failed to appear, through 
Marion’s anxiety to drag her most unwilling 
brother to a gathering where dance and music 
held sway. 


82 


FOECED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“We can’t go if you don’t. We can’t very 
well get there without an escort.” 

Arthur grumbled, offered to pay for a carriage, 
suggested going with them to the door ; but in 
the end Marion carried the day, and he found 
himself committed to that which his soul 
loathed. 

“ Do you know anybody named Dering ? ” in- 
terrogated his sister. 

“ I know one Dering, in the army — big, slow, 
loose-jointed fellow ; regular down-Easter. Bald, 
hobbles, and hates girls. That the one ? ” 

“ Not exactly,” with a laugh at the description, 
so far distant from that of the hero of a fashionable 
watering-place. For a girl to have given a simi- 
lar one, would have meant bitter enmity. To the 
masculine mind, it was consistent with the warm- 
est friendship. “ This one is fond of ladies’ soci- 
ety, isn’t in the army, and all the girls were crazy 
over him at Mt. Desert. So it could not well 
have been your bald, rheumatic old friend.” 

“ Who said he was rheumatic, I’d like to 
know ? ” 

“ You did — that is, you said he hobbled. This 
one is 3mung and handsome, and dances ; and he 
is neither bald nor toothless.” 


CINBEBELLA^ S BALL. 


83 


“He got stuck in the foot with an Injun 
arrow,” related Dr. Ware, succinctly. “But if 
he dances, it isn’t the same man; for Dering 
would not dance when he could, and now he 
cannot; so he has incontrovertible reason for 
declining all invitations,” with a sigh. “ So like 
a woman — jumping at conclusions. If she only 
had the grip for science, she would beat Cuvier 
himself at reconstructing a whole elephant from a 
single tooth. Voltaire should have made Zadig a 
woman ; and if Robinson Crusoe had only been 
married, Mrs. Robinson could have told him, from 
that footprint on the sand, just the island their 
visitor hailed from, how many brothers and sis- 
ters he had, his parents’ names, his grandfather’s 
business, and what they had had for dinner,” 
with which gibe Dr. Ware took his departure, 
promising, on his most sacred honor, to be on 
hand when the train came into the depot. 

The evening came, and the two girls dressed 
in separate apartments; for Kitty had a way 
of spreading herself, equal only to the djinn 
shut up in the bottle in the “Arabian Nights.” 
Both bureaus, bed, chairs, table, and floor 
were all occupied with parts of her wardrobe, 
so that Marion, after some words, gathered up 


84 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


her own belongings in wrath and departed for 
the spare-room. 

Nothing, probably, can make a person more 
dissatisfied and self-conscious, more incapable of 
being her best, than the unpleasant knowledge 
that her dress is unbecoming or unsuitable. And, 
then, it is hard to go to a party when the last 
glimpse of one’s visage has been that of an egg- 
shaped face, with a prominent nose, no eyes, and 
a mouth extending from ear to ear. 

The arrangement was that the girls were to go 
in on the train, and Arthur and a herdic would 
convey them to the house. Not as pleasant as 
taking a carriage at the door. Still less pleasant 
did it seem when, after looking lowering all day, 
it began to rain — a gentle, persistent drizzle, that 
gave no hope of clearing off. 

“We ought to have taken the carriage in, as 
Arthur told us to,” said Kitty, surveying the mud 
and mist from the bay-window. 

“ And have him pay the enormous price they 
ask!” snapped Marion. “ I’m glad I do think a 
little for somebody besides myself.” 

“ I would not rejoice too much over my perfec- 
tions, if I were you. Now, what shall we do ? ” 

“ Wrap up well and you won’t get wet,” inter- 


CINDERELLA^ S BALL. 


85 


posed Mrs. Ware, cheerily. “ Here are your rub- 
bers, well warmed. Wear something more than 
that thin sacque under your ulster, Marion. 
Here, Kitty, here’s the veil. Let me tie it, dear.” 

“I can’t find any umbrella. I had to throw 
my old silk one away. Where’s yours, Kitty ? ” 
called Marion, from below. She was fumbling 
in the sitting-room closet. 

“ I believe I left it at school.” 

“ Where’s the serge one ? ” 

“ I lent it to Mrs. Drew.” 

Another pause. Another plunge into the 
depths of the closet. 

“ What ever shall we do ? This is all there is ! ” 

She was upstairs again, with the only umbrella 
she had been able to find — big, of a faded, whitey 
bottle-green, bordered with a broad, striped band 
of paler green; rusty, with one spike projecting 
beyond its fellows. It had been left at the house, 
years before, by an elderly gentleman, whose ten- 
der care of himself had won from Marion the 
sobriquet of “ Auntie Jim.” In time, the name 
had come to be bestowed upon the umbrella 
itself, that had reposed unmolested when treas- 
ured possessions had been lost, borrowed, or gone 
the way of all earthly silk. 


86 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


It had always been a source of mortification to 
Marion ; a modern reading, she was wont to de- 
clare, of the retribution that overtook the two 
little boys who mocked at age in biblical times, 
and were eaten by bears in consequence. It was 
chiefly through Arthur’s instrumentality that 
judgment had come upon her. If he were to 
escort her home from a friend’s, at the faintest 
indication of rain he would appear with Auntie 
Jim under his arm, and meet all her remonstrances 
on the homeward way with a brotherly, “ This is 
big enough for us both, and yours isn’t. If you 
don’t like it, you can walk ahead.” 

When no other umbrella was at hand, this — 
always in its place in the back entry — would 
be seized by him on a rainy evening, and, on 
his return, invariably thrust conspicously into 
the umbrella-stand in the front hall, in full 
view, of the callers that were sure to come. He 
was alike regardless of Marion’s entreaties, scold- 
ings and gift of a handsome silk umbrella. 
Auntie Jim was big and handy, and the young 
man had the independence of action as well as 
thought that characterize a doctor. 

Marion had given the old green umbrella again 
and again to a servant. But girls might come. 


CINDEBELLA^S BALL. 


8T 


and girls might go ; Auntie Jim remained. She 
had hidden it behind the trunks in the lumber- 
room ; had thrown it into the inmost recesses of 
the coal-bin, that, extending beneath the sidewalk 
to the curbstone, was as like Hecate’s cave as any 
place could be nowadays; she had run down- 
stairs to give it to Pat on a stormy morning, 
smilingly bidding him “ not to mind about return- 
ing it.” 

All her endeavors were alike fruitless. Sum- 
mer came, the trunks were taken out, and some- 
body would find and replace the umbrella ; while 
Pat brought it out triumphantly from the dark 
and mysterious depths of the coal-bin, and grate- 
fully handed it back, as “ Miss Marion’s lind of 
a loan.” When they were getting ready to leave 
their old home, Marion declared that the one alle- 
viating circumstance was the fact that she should 
also leave Auntie Jim. But once again were her 
hopes in vain. No one knew who had packed it 
with such care, but it had arrived at the new 
home in one of the first loads, and now, as ever, 
refusing to be lost, injured, or lent, bid fair to be- 
come an heirloom in the Ware family. Small 
wonder that, at its unsightly aspect, Kitty was 
moved to say, with some warmth, — 


88 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ You’re never going to take that balloon ! 
Haven’t you any self-respect? ” 

“Lots. But no umbrella,” replied Marion, 
stolidly. She had been doubtful herself the min- 
ute before, as she shook out — as well as she 
could, for the hitch in the machinery — the green- 
striped monster, and, with a spasm, noted that 
loosened rib and flapping cotton. 

“ Virtue may struggle in a bad cravat, 

But man and nature scorn the shocking hat.’* 

And yet more, the umbrella. But opposition — 
and opposition from Kitty — nerved heart and 
brain. 

“ It’s all we have, any way, and we must take 
this, or get drenched and our hair all out of curl. 
There’s no need of calling the attention of the 
company to it.” She had made up her mind. 
Wild horses could not have made her change it. 

“ There is no need to take it in with you,” said 
Mrs. Ware. “It will do very well as far as the 
station here, and Maggie can take it back with 
her ; you won’t have to walk at all, after you get 
in,” which was a satisfactory arrangement for all 
concerned. 

Only, there was one factor in it, of which the 


CINDEBELLA^S BALL, 89 

factor’s motlier had forgotten to take account ; 
namely, Kitty. 

There was no reason for it. There never was ; 
but the two girls, under Maggie’s escort, only 
arrived at the depot in time to hear the train puff- 
ing off from the next station, half a mile below. 
There was no other train for two hours. On the 
other hand, they could take the horse-car in — a 
long, disagreeable route, but conveying them 
nearly to the Merediths’ door. They were to 
spend the night at a friend’s near by. 

Marion walked up and down the two tiny 
rooms, and scolded and hesitated ; the two had a 
lively quarrel to pass away the time, and, finally, 
the horse-car was in sight. They must take it, or 
wait two long hours. If the only way Marion 
could serve was to stand and wait, then was her 
chance of salvation a poor one. Besides, Kitty 
had taken, on entrance, the only comfortable seat 
the station afforded — the Boston rocking-chair — 
and was swaying back and forth, perfectly con- 
tent so to do, if the next train did not go till 
midnight. 

“I’m going to take the car. You can do as 
you please,” said Marion, abruptly ; and, umbrella 
in hand, stalked out, leaving her sister to follow 
or not, as seemed good to her. 


90 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


There was but one remark exchanged all 
through the long, damp, dismal ride in, and that 
was from Kitty. 

“ What’ll we do with the umbrella ? Don’t 
expect me to take it. It’s all your fault. I said 
don’t bring it.” 

It was very trying. Marion had at times every 
excuse for the flashing-out of her quick temper. 

“Kitty Ware, you be quiet! I don’t want to 
hear another word from you from now till next 
year.” 

Arthur, meantime, true to his word, was at the 
post of duty when the train came in. Seeing 
nothing of his sisters, he composed himself to 
patience and a Herald^ and so passed the time till 
the next train arrived. Then, supposing the now 
pouring rain had prevented their coming, he 
splashed his way back to the hospital, with mind 
divided between masculine wrath at a woman’s 
not keeping an appointment and heart-felt relief 
that he had escaped a party. 

The rain was coming down more heavily by 
the time the two girls left the car, and there was 
nothing to do but open the umbrella. It was big 
enough to protect both — in fact, it would have 
kept the army of Israelites dry — and they picked 


CINDERELLA^ S BALL. 


91 


their way along the pavement, avoiding puddles as 
best they could. Marion thinking dismally inside 
the black veil that was designed to protect her 
hair, but which, as though anxious to retire from 
the world, she had pulled over her face as well, 
that if this were the way she was to go to parties, 
in future she would stay at home. 

It was of course late when they went up the 
steps of the house. Kitty entered at once and 
ran upstairs. Marion was detained by the um- 
brella’s obstinately refusing to be furled. In her 
impatience at the unpleasant situation, the idea 
came into her mind of throwing it bodily to the 
pavement, when it came down all at once, with 
unexpected force, pinching her finger with that 
sharp little pain that for the moment makes one 
sick and dizzy. 

Everybody had arrived. Through the open 
folding doors on one side shone the whirling color 
of bright evening dresses. Two or three ulstered 
young men, evidently just come, were standing by 
the library door, opposite. So much Marion took 
in at the first glance, through the black mist of 
veil, blinded though she was by the brilliant light. 
But where was the servant? — where was she to 
deposit that big and wet umbrella ? 


92 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


At that moment the music ceased, the dancers 
stopped whirliug in gay confusion, and the buzz 
of voices followed. There was a general move- 
ment toward the doors. 

How unpleasant to be standing there, in dark 
and dripping raiment, a veritable Cinderella, only 
making her entree, instead of her exit, in the 
midnight rags. Evidently the same idea — the 
necessity of making their escape — seized the 
young men, for with a final word and a laugh, 
they started toward the stairs, and at the same 
time a voice from behind the group was heard 
saying; — 

“ Gentlemen’s room, front, on the right.” 

It was all in a moment, entrance and pain and 
hurry and obscured vision. Marion caught the 
words and, as the young men moved away, she 
reached out auntie Jim’s relic to the person who 
had spoken. 

“Take it,” she said, in haste that made her 
tones yet more sharp and peremptory. 

The next moment, if she could have surren- 
dered life to have gained unconsciousness, gladly 
would she have done so. It was only one word 
that made her look fairly up — some way up she 
had to look, too — but no servant ever had the 


CINDERELLA'S BALL. 9S 

voice that said, with deliberation almost amount- 
ing to a drawl, — 

“ Certainly.” 

A hand had taken the umbrella. If with the 
one word her terrible blunder had flashed upon 
her, how much more did she realize it when her 
look rested full on the face, on the eyes that were 
looking at her with — yes, amusement, apprecia- 
tion of the situation, behind the glasses. 

Not that they were at all Mars-like or threaten- 
ing. On the contrary, they were of rather a pale 
blue, and their predominant quality was kindness. 
But with it was the undefinable look a man gains 
who is accustomed to speak and to be obeyed, to 
whom authority is, besides, so natural that there 
is no need for him to be self-assertive. A doctor 
or a soldier has the look. This one might have 
been either, or both, for that matter, he had it to 
such a degree. There was a kind of military 
erectness to his carriage, that Marion did not 
know that she noticed, any more than she was 
conscious of noting that he had a slight fair mous- 
tache, and his hair, also fair and parted in the 
middle, was worn rather thin on top. But it was 
all photographed on her brain at that one upward 
glance. 


94 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


“ Oh, I’m so sorry ! Oh, please, please — ” 
stretching her hand helplessly out, and waving it 
like a blind person’s. 

But the kind, masterful voice replied, “ Let me 
help you,” and the speaker, holding the umbrella, 
moved toward the end of the hall. Marion, still 
with the photographic faculty, noted that he was 
slightly lame. 

But long afterward, the four words, so simply 
said, came back to her, as the key-note of the 
man’s character. 

There was nothing for it but to run upstairs. 
Kitty had already taken off her things and was 
pulling out and arranging the soft little curls 
around her face. It seemed as though the two 
had changed places, and that it was Marion who 
never would be ready. And when they were 
finally out of the room, it was only, on the thresh- 
hold, to turn back again, with an incoherent 
murmur of “ fix the sash — lace don’t go right.” 
When they were at last descending the stairs, she 
said, with an odd anxiety in the tones she tried in 
vain to make careless : — • 

“ How much difference there is between a per- 
son in evening dress and one bundled up in 
waterproof and veil. They’re most as good as 


CINBEBELLA^S BALL, 


95 


domino and mask, aren’t they?” Kitty sailed 
along and paid no attention. “ Aren’t they ? ” 
coming to a standstill. 

“I think I was told,” responded her sister, 
“ not to address you till next year. You may ask 
me to-morrow.” 

What a miserable evening it was, and, late as 
they were, what a long one ! all the envy and 
petty vexations that had gone before were lost 
sight of now, all the small triumphs seemed as 
vain and transitory as ever cried by the preacher. 
What did it matter, after all, that Annie’s dress 
was just that particular shade of pale rose she 
herself would have chosen ? of what moment that 
Lucy’s new silk transformed hers to dingy navy 
blue, or that Molly Keith looked lovelier than 
ever in muslin that was only an excuse for em- 
broidery and Valenciennes? It was handsome 
Ned Keith who led, of course. He always did 
lead on such occasions, wherever he might be, and 
he was present pretty much everywhere where 
there was dance and music and pretty girls. 

With one eye on the door it was small wonder 
that Marion should be so absent-minded, should 
answer at random, and make several inexcusable ‘ 
blunders in dancing. But no tall, big figure ap» 


96 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


peared, and, by the time supper came, she was 
growing lighter-hearted as hope whispered, “ May- 
be he’s gone home.” Not even the discovery that 
Arthur was not there had power to disturb her, 
till the thought of their missing escort arose, as 
the time drew near when she could bid her 
hostess good-night. She had been avoiding An- 
nie all the evening lest a certain promised intro- 
duction should ensue. 

She sought out Kitty, who, with one or two 
others, had been bidden more as a companion for 
Gertie than as a guest with full rights and pow- 
ers, but who had passed a very happy evening, 
undisturbed by visions of big young men, eye- 
glasses, an umbrella, and kindly, commanding blue 
eyes. All these young people were on the stairs 
together, eating and criticising and pulling bon- 
bons, with two or three very young men who had 
chosen to devote themselves to “ the little ones.” 
But Annie was not to be found for some time. 
Then Marion pulled her aside and explained. 
They were to spend the night at the Walton’s, but 
Arthur had failed them, the house was at the 
other end of the street, and it was nearly mid- 
night. Would she be kind enough to let James 
go with them ? Annie looked puzzled. 


CINDERELLA'S BALL. 


97 


“ I’m so sorry. It was perfectly horrid of 
James,” she said. “He got tipsy ever so early in 
the evening — it was disgraceful,” as though the 
fault had lain chiefly in the early hour James had 
taken to let himself be beguiled by the wine-cup 
that is red. “ He had to be sent to bed before 
nine.” 

“Your father — perhaps he wouldn’t mind,” 
hazarded Marion, at her wit’s end. Annie made 
no answer. “I’m sure, it’s too bad to trouble 
you,” began her friend, in rather an offended tone. 
“It isn’t very pleasant to throw one’s self on 
another’s mercy — ” 

“I’ll see to it, if you really must go now. I 
could not think of letting you go alone. He’ll be 
ready when you are — father — ” so Marion ran 
upstairs, hardly noticing, in her dilemma, how un- 
natural and strained her friend’s manner was. 

“ Where’s the umbrella ? ” inquired Kitty, sud- 
denly, in an unfortunate lapse into memory and 
foresight. 

“We sha’n’t need it. Thank Heaven, it’s 
cleared off,” with which devout utterance she de- 
scended, thankful for even the escort of Mr. Mere- 
dith. It was Annie who was awaiting them. 

“ I’m so sorry,” she began. “ Don’t say a word, 


98 


FORCED ACQUAIJSTTANCES. 


I couldn’t let you go alone. He was going that 
way, I went to the library for father, but he was 
the only one there, and I suppose he saw I was 
looking for somebody and asked. I never thought 
you wouldn’t like it till afterwards — it’s so nat- 
ural to ask him for anything — you don’t mind — 
he always seems to stand with a hand out — ” 

“What are you talking about? ” demanded Mar- 
ion, bewildered. “Which — whom did you ask?” 

“ Dr. Dering.” 

Marion gasped. There was no doubt in her 
mind. Still, she would ask. 

“ Is he lame ? ” 

“ Lame ? Why, yes, a little. Why — why — ” 

She was talking to the air. At almost the 
first word her friend, without uttering another 
syllable, had whirled around, had seized Kitty by 
the arm with a fierce “ Come,” and, before the lat- 
ter fairly knew it, they were on the sidewalk. 

“Now run,” commanded Marion. 

Easier said than done. In the first place Kitty 
could not run. A slightly accelerated walk was 
the fastest rate of locomotion the eye of man had 
ever beheld her attain. In the second, it had 
grown colder, and the pavement was a glare of 
ice, on which even rubber boots were but slight 


CINDEBELLA^ S BALL. 


99 


guarantee against falls. Whether they would or 
no, they were forced to pick their way cautiously 
along, till, all at once, Kitty came to a standstill 
and clutched her sister with both hands. 

“O, Marion, there’s a man following us! ” 

“Come, do come,” pleaded Marion; “there isn’t 
a soul,” but in vain. There she stood, rooted to 
the spot. 

“Wait till I see if I can see him again,” turn- 
ing her head cautiously. “A perfectly awful- 
looking man I He can’t walk straight. Ow I 
What shall we do ? ” 

“ Do you want to stand here till he catches up 
with us ? If you don’t come up these steps this 
minute,” said Marion, sternly, “ I shall leave you 
here.” And then, by main force, she succeeded 
in pulling her away. 

The peal of the door-bell mingled with the bells 
of half a dozen churches near at hand, announcing 
that the new year had begun. 

“ He don’t know who I am,” thought Marion ; 
“ that’s one comfort. I hope I shall never see 
him again. And, thank Heaven, I am free at last 
from that haunting monster ! ” 

So fled Cinderella, all unwitting that she was 
pursued by the Prince, or that he held in his hand 
the slipper, modernized into a green umbrella. 


CHAPTER V. 


HOW THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD LOOKED. 

“If I were to wed a king, Monday would 
always be to me wasbing-day, and my first im- 
pulse to wash up the royal breakfast-things,” said 
Marion, gloomily, as she began gathering the 
china and silver from the breakfast-table, while 
Kitty reluctantly prepared herself for school, on 
the following Monday morning. 

“ I wish I could wed a king. The first enact- 
ment should be to abolish schools, execute all 
the teachers, and declare chemistry high treason.” 

“ It’s the most disagreeable thing about a party 
— that one feels afterwards as though she had 
fallen from the heights. I realize now that I be- 
long to the laboring class, and I don’t like it one 
bit,” clattering spoons and forks together, as 
though they were in some wise to blame. 

“ You ought not to grumble,” said Kitty, vir- 
tuously. “ Think how many there are who are 
worse off — me, for instance. Where’s my lunch- 
\ eon?” 


100 


BOW THE WOBK-A-DAY WOBLB LOOKED. 101 

“ On the side-table, where mother told you she 
put it. If I had my way, we should sleep in 
hammocks, and eat with our fingers off the bare 
table.” 

“ Beds and dish-water are a beatific vision com- 
pared with books, blackboards, and desks. Be- 
sides, I feel,” went on Kitty, impressively, “ that 
this is going to be a disagreeable day.” A convic- 
tion due in part, perhaps, to an innate conscious- 
ness that 2a and 35 did not equal bx, “It’s a 
presentiment.” 

“ Do leave presentiments to those who believe 
in ghosts and forerunners.” 

“I do. I am one of them. Something is 
going to happen. There is no use trying to turn 
the stream of stern necessity. If I return to- 
night, we will see who has had the worst day ; 
but — farewell. Think of me sometimes,” with 
which anticipation she started, with rather a 
gloomy face, to begin the week, followed by 
Marion’s voice, saying : — 

“ Agreed ! but it will be I.” 

When evening came, the two girls had appar- 
ently forgotten the promise of the morning. 
Kitty settled down on one side of the table, with 
a hated little black book, on whose cover was the 


102 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

monogram E. S. It had its usual effect in send- 
ing her off into one of her fits of musing. Of 
what ? She could hardly have told herself. Long 
conversations with imaginary persons, or with 
real ones in new relations, journeys, adventures, 
herself in every conceivable situation, and all 
without volition on her part. It was just this 
idle dreaming that was the most delicious thing 
the girl knew. 

Marion sat opposite, sewing. Perhaps she was 
tired with her afternoon in town, for her usually 
ready tongue was still. It could not be because 
her errand had been a fruitless one, for her friend 
had, happily, not mentioned her name to the 
escort she had run away from, and had solemnly 
promised never to reveal it. 

“Some candy would be agreeable,” suggested 
Kitty, as her sister rolled up her work and put it 
in her basket, — a funny -shaped little article of 
Indian workmanship, like a canoe with a handle, 
“if you will please make it. I always want 
something nice when I’ve been studying, to take 
the taste of literature out of my mouth.” 

“I’ll make and you pull,” suggested Marion, 
dryly. 

“ I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll make it to- 


HOW THE WOBK-A-BAY WOBLH LOOKED. 103 

gether,” replied Kitty, in her smooth tones. “ I’ll 
go out in the kitchen and get the spider ; and I’ll 
measure the molasses and put it on the fire, and 
get the pan all ready, too, buttered and set on the 
table. And then you can just go out and stir it, 
and, when it’s done, pull it.” 

“ I should know that for one of your proposi- 
tions, if I heard it in Nova Zembla. You needn’t 
trouble yourself to do anything. It always makes 
more work than it saves,” with which stinging re- 
ply Marion set out for the kitchen, followed by : — 

“Lemon, please. And pull it very crisp and 
white.” 

Crisp and white, and with just the desired 
flavor, was the big piece of candy that was put 
into Kitty’s mouth an hour later by an unseen 
hand, rousing her from the attitude in which its 
owner had left her, while a voice said, “ Try that, 
and see if it don’t take the taste of literature out 
of your mouth, and console you for your dreadful 
day. Which was it, battle, murder, or sudden 
death?” 

“ It was an awfully stupid day, that’s all. The 
worst thing was, I dropped my luncheon into a 
puddle when I tried to hurry. It will be a lesson 
to me never to hurry again. What happened to 
you?” 


104 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

“We were grumbling this morning over every- 
thing in general,” said Marion, as Mrs. Ware 
looked inquiringly up, “and we each had a pre- 
sentiment that was worth about as much as 
presentiments usually are.” For she scorned 
everything that bordered on superstition, as 
springing merely from ignorance or weakness. 
“Nothing happened to me, either, except — that 
— I learned a lesson, too.” 

“ Tell,” begged Kitty, with her mouth full. 

“I will. I don’t believe but what there are 
worse things, on the whole, than making beds 
and washing dishes; and I’d rather grub along 
all my life than have nice things under the condi- 
tions some people do.” 

“ Yes ; that is what I told you this morning.” 

“Every heart knoweth its own bitterness. 
There are a good many worse things than pov- 
erty, Marion, and, if one only keeps up a brave 
heart, there is pleasure even in managing and 
contriving, though it does look so hard and dis- 
agreeable to you, dear,” said Mrs. Ware, who, in 
her own young days had gone through much the 
same experience Marion was now having, and to 
the tender sympathy that is a mother’s by nature 
could add that of “ knowing all about it.” 


BOW THE WOBK-A-BAY WOBLB LOOKEB. 105 

“ It was at the Merediths’,” went on Marion, 
slowly. “ I got there before luncheon, and Annie 
asked me to stay. We were just seated when 
Mr. Meredith came in. He seldom comes home 
then, and they never know whether to expect 
him. He took no more notice of me than if I 
had been a stick. It was because they had sat 
down without him. I never heard anything like 
the way he stormed and raged up and down the 
room, and then he went off to other things with 
no connection with it — to Mrs. Meredith, chiefly, 
and she sitting there so pale and sweet, and never 
answering a word through all his insults. If 
there had been a man there, he would have 
knocked him down. I longed to,” and her flash- 
ing eyes looked it. “ He told her she was extrav- 
agant, and did not care for his interests, and the 
household was going to rack and ruin through her 
negligence and wastefulness. Nobody answered. 
Nobody ate anything more, though we all pre- 
tended to when he sat down by and by. He 
found fault with and scolded — no, raved — about 
everything on the table, and talked to Mrs. Mere- 
dith as though she were the cook ; and, finally, 
told her she ought to have gone down and cooked 
it herself, for her incompetence and her misman- 


106 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


agement of servants was to blame for it all. 
Then he ran on to the number they kept — he 
reminded me a good deal of Mark Twain’s story 
of the ram. 

“ Lucy and Annie looked miserable, but tried 
to keep up the conversation whenever there was 
a little pause in which they could laugh and talk. 
Gertie was trembling all over, and I thought 
every moment would burst out crying. I know I 
should if he had stayed there any longer. His last 
threat was that he’d ‘ burn the front door down,’ 
though I thought when he went out that he’d 
changed his mind and concluded to bang it to 
pieces instead. Nobody spoke a single word after 
he’d gone ; but if you’d seen the different look 
on their faces ! 

“Annie took me up into her own room, and 
locked the door. She pushed me into a chair, and 
began walking up and down. She was white as a 
sheet. You know how cool and self-contained 
she always is. 

“‘You’ve seen it at last,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it 
horrible! Do you wonder I hate him? Yes, 
hate him, Marion Ware, though he is my father ! 
I hate him all the more on that account. We’re 
treated to one of these scenes about once a week. 


HOW THE WOMK-A-BAY WOBLB LOOKEB. 107 

The rest of the time he is as you and other people 
see him. Last week the cause was that the dress- 
maker sent her bill along with my dress and 
Lucy’s, instead of waiting till the quarter. You 
can imagine how much we enjoyed them, and 
how we envied every girl there whose dress had 
not been bought with such a price. 

“ ‘ It’s the same with everything. One day 
telling mother to order what she pleases, or us 
that we can have this or that when perhaps we 
haven’t even asked for it ; and, when the fit takes 
him, storming because we’ve done as he said, and 
telling mother her extravagance is ruining him. 
Always mother ! If only he would take me. 

“ ‘ People say, “ What a pleasant, genial man 
your father is ! ” You’ve seen a little of his 
home pleasantness and geniality. How do you 
think you’d like to live with it? We never tell 
anybody, of course. We act as though we were 
the ones to be ashamed unto death. We were so 
afraid he’d find out James was tipsy the other 
night, and have a rage before everybody. We 
were all four trying to keep it from him the 
whole evening. That was why I couldn’t ask 
him to go home with you. He’s killing mother 
by inches. I wish I were dead, or anywhere out 


108 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


of this dreadful house!’ and then she dropped 
down beside the bed, and buried her face, and 
cried as though her heart would break. 

“ I didn’t know what to say. What can one in 
such a case ?” — not understanding then (for such 
understanding only comes with one’s own suffer- 
ing) that she had said and done the best and only 
thing when she had put her arms around her 
friend’s neck, and said, “ I’m so sorry ! ” “ I’ve 

never seen anything of the kind before, much as 
I’ve been there. Did you kuow? Does he 
drink?” she wound up, abruptly. 

Mrs. Ware answered the last question first. 

“ Only very moderately. It is not that in the 
least. Perhaps there would be more excuse if it 
were. Yes, I knew. I was there once, too, years 
ago, when he was in just such a rage, and Mrs. 
Meredith told me. It is simply and entirely an 
ungoverned temper. The storm comes about so 
often ; and, when it is over, he will be amiable and 
unruffled for the next interval.” 

“It’s the Berserker rage,” said Kitty, half to 
herself. “ He can’t help it. It possesses him.” 

“Can’t help it — he can too!” cried Marion, 
indignantly. “ There never was a temper in this 
world that can’t be controlled.” Mrs. Ware 


HOW THE WOBK-A-DAY WOULD LOOKED. 109 

looked across to her elder daughter with a queer 
little smile, that was caught and perhaps inter- 
preted, for she added, “ A temper like that ; of 
course everybody gets provoked, now and then, 
and speaks out.” 

“Perhaps getting provoked and speaking out 
was the origin of Mr. Meredith’s,” suggested Mrs. 
Ware, quietly. 

“ I’ve no patience with the weak charity that 
calls drunkenness dipsomania, stealing klepto- 
mania, and would try to shelter furious temper and 
wickedness under the name of insanity. A 
spade’s a spade with me.” And so it was, for, like 
the majority of people, Marion had sympathy only 
so far as her own experience took her. “ Did you 
know, too ? ” to Kitty. 

“I never saw him, but Gertie’s told me.” 
There was but little in which she and the friend 
of her bosom did not exchange confidences. 

“I think, with you, that in ninety-nine cases out 
of a hundred we give moral perversity too soft 
a name,” said Mrs. Ware, gently. “But perhaps 
there is just a little to be considered in Kitty’s 
view. To bear it out, there was another member 
of his family — his sister — who was possessed at 
intervals by the same rages. I met her a good 


110 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


many years ago, at the Merediths’ — a stately 
woman, whose manners and conversation would 
have made her charming anywhere. And if, as it 
was said, the chance that led her to choose one 
man instead of the other had not been the rejec- 
tion of the future President of the United States, 
I can well picture her as indeed the first lady in 
the land. 

“She was born for society, loved to rule, and 
was the acknowledged leader of the town where 
she lived, a power in its political as well as social 
life. Generous, warm-hearted, large-headed, ready 
to give up a party or reception at a moment’s 
notice to sit through the night at the bedside of a 
poor sick stranger, — everybody liked her, no 
gathering or enterprise was complete without her. 

“ They said that when she was young no one 
observed her temper — but there must have been 
something, the small beginnings that might then 
have been trampled out. Her servants never 
stayed. One by one she quarrelled with her 
friends, till even the warmest — and she had 
scores — were estranged. It did not spare even 
her own family then. She quarrelled with her 
daughter’s lover, and the girl’s death followed the 
parting she enforced. Her sons, first estranged, 


BOW THE WOBK-A-BAT WOULD LOOKED, m 

then at enmity, left her, one after the other ; her 
husband died, heart-broken, at the wreck. To 
wind up the story of a miserably wasted life, the 
habit of opium-eating, begun to drown the re- 
proaches of conscience, grew upon her, and now, 
a helpless victim to it, she is living out her 
wretched life somewhere in a solitary farm-house, 
her fits of rage alternating with stupor. One 
story of what may come from that which causes 
more misery than war or famine — an uncon- 
trolled temper.” 

“How dreadful! But that is something unu- 
sual. It sounds like a story,” said Kitty. 

“It sounds like a tragedy — and a true one.” 

Marion was silent, thinking over this little his- 
tory of a wasted life, and perhaps drawing from 
her “ day of misfortunes ” another lesson than the 
one she was ready to acknowledge against envy 
and discontent. 

“ I went somewhere to-day, too,” Kitty’s voice 
interrupted. “ It’s made me homesick ever since.” 

“ Did you ever go to a place where you were 
not? I’m not likely to soon forget that night at 
the Waltons’. You began, ‘Oh what a homesick 
house I Did you ever know such homesick peo- 
ple ? ’ till I was worn out. And in the middle of 


112 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the night I was roused by your clutching my arm, 
and, when I expected to hear there was a burglar 
under the bed, you gasped out, ‘ Oh what a home- 
sick bed. Let’s go home before breakfast ! ’ ” 

“ It is astonishing what a fund of anecdote you 
have concerning me about which I know nothing. 
It never happened, mother,” said Kitty, indig- 
nantly. 

Marion opened her mouth to say something 
sharp, but seemed suddenly to change her mind, 
and put a piece of candy in instead. 

“ I will preface my remarks with the informa- 
tion that I share the dislike of all gifted speakers 
to interruption. Know, then,” continued Kitty, a 
la “Arabian Nights,” “that there is a girl at 
school named Home. Her first name is Grace, 
but it might also be Mary, — names sometimes 
escape me. She is lame, and deformed, and poor. 
Nobody knew her. At recess she ate her lunch- 
eon at her desk, alone. She lives out this way. 
I used to see her on the train. She was not a 
bright scholar, but she studied hard, and always 
had her lessons perfectly. Just before vacation 
she was taken ill — she is never really well or 
strong; but nobody noticed she was absent till 
Miss Hallock told us this morning, after prayers, 
that she was not expected to live. 


HOW THE WORK-A-DAT WORLD LOOKED. 113 

“ Then the girls were sorry and kind of wished 
they’d taken more notice of her. They thought 
they would send her some flowers, if — if she were 
still alive. So they took up a subscription, and a 
committee of three went to the florilt’s near the 
school, up by the park, and they asked me to take 
them out. I wish I had not. I can’t stop think- 
ing about it. 

“I never can bear to even hear about sick 
people. It always seems as though it were I who 
was having my leg cut off. I can’t read those 
horrid ‘ Lancets ’ Arthur will leave about without 
seeing how mortal I am. I recognize all the 
symptoms. It’s worse to see it — oh, so much 
worse. 

“The house was near the station. The two 
rooms they had were neat and nice. But I 
thought if Mrs. Home didn’t come right away, 
she would find her guest in tears. The sitting- 
room — it was dining and sewing-room and 
kitchen, too — looked out over a tiny yard to the 
track, where freight cars were moving up and 
down. There was a pump, painted blue, in the 
yard. The stove was in one corner, and the room 
smelt of sausages. I can never see a blue pump 
or smell sausages again without feeling so desolate 


114 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


and tired. There was a sewing-machine by the 
window. The window itself was covered with 
steam. That alone is enough to make anybody 
see the world through a gray mist. Mrs. Home 
is a tailoress. Grace could not help much. She 
crocheted rigolettes at twenty-five cents a dozen. 
They were better off once, when her husband was 
alive, but he was lost at sea one winter, found 
frozen to the rigging. Grace’s illness had been 
considerable added expense, but the doctor said 
she would get well. 

“ Grace’s bedroom was upstairs, and of course 
I could not refuse to go up. It was a little room 
and cold. The walls were bare, and there was a 
scrap of carpet beside the bed. There she lay, 
and her face was whiter and more pinched than 
ever. She is very homely. I don’t know one good 
gift that she has. I uncovered the flowers and 
said the girls had sent them, with their love, and 
hoped she would enjoy them and would be back 
soon. She did not seem as pleased as I should 
think she’d have been. Maybe smelling sausages 
and looking at a blue pump all the time numbs 
one. I did not say much either. I wanted to get 
away, but did not know just how. We talked a 
little about school, and she said it was the worst 


EOW THE WOBK-A-DAT WOBLT) LOOKED. 115 

of being sick — having to stay out and get behind- 
hand. Mrs. Home begged me to come again, for 
Grace did long so to hear about school. But I 
shouldn’t dream of going again. I can’t get away 
from it as it is. I can’t help being Grace Home, 
lying there, poor, and ill, and deformed. You tell 
something, mother. Maybe I’ll stop thinking 
about it, then.” 

“ I don’t know that I have anything especial to 
tell, dear. I haven’t made any call to-day.” 

“ Tell about when you were a little girl,^then,” 
begged Kitty. 

“I think I always feel especially sorry for a 
sailor’s daughter. I remember so well when my 
own father was lost at sea. You have heard it 
before, but if Kitty must have a story about ‘ when 
I was a little girl,’ she’ll like it all the better, per- 
haps, for having heard it before. We lived in a 
great old-fashioned house, full of odd nooks and 
corners, with landings and windows on the stair- 
case and steps in the passage-ways where you least 
expected them. At the back of the house was a 
terraced garden, of which nobody took much care, 
but where there were currant-bushes and plum 
and pear trees that were our delight — my 
brother’s and mine. I think pears grow nowhere 


116 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

in such perfection as in Salem. They taste of the 
salt water. 

“ Our father was away most of the time, and no 
sooner had he started on a voyage than we would 
begin counting the days till his return. His ship 
went to all parts of the world — to India, China, 
Africa, and he would bring us home all manner of 
nice and curious and pretty things from them all. 
There was a barrel of pickled limes, — yes, Kitty, 
a whole barrel, — that stood behind the kitchen 
door. Boxes of delicious guava jelly, rich foreign 
sweetmeats, oranges and bananas and cocoanuts, 
some of the last curiously carved by the negroes 
to be used as bottles. Mother used to wear a 
huge shell comb, and had a beautifully wrought 
ivory card-case and crepe shawls and ostrich 
feathers. One voyage he brought home a mon- 
key for Richard and a lovely little paroquet for 
me. Your work-basket, Marion, was given me 
when I was just learning to sew, and a Chinese 
thimble in the form of a lotus-flower. 

“ But the most curious thing he ever brought 
was a little negro boy, a native African. The 
ship came across a boatload of children that were 
to be sold into slavery, and father bought one for 
a bushel of corn. The sailors rigged him with 


HOW THE WOBK-A-BAY WOBLB LOOKED. 117 

clothes from some sails, and named him Jim Cy- 
pher, after the ship. He had never seen a house 
before, and did not even know how to go upstairs. 
He managed it on his hands and knees, as though 
climbing a tree. He was into mischief from morn- 
ing till night ; stole mother’s preserves, ate green 
fruit till he was terribly sick, and was the terror 
of all the children in the neighborhood, for he 
would pop out on them from unexpected corners 
and chatter away like a monkey in his queer 
jargon. Jim Cypher and I were great friends, and 
I tried to imitate all his tricks, but Richard could 
not endure him. ‘ Scat, g’way ! ’ he used to say, 
whenever he saw him coming, and I remember 
well how indignant he was when he saw me one 
day drink after him from a tin dipper. By and by 
Jim wanted to go South, so mother gave him his 
free papers and let him go. 

“My father’s last voyage was an unusually 
long one, but at last we could watch for his re- 
turn. Only my mother and I, this time, for Rich- 
ard was with him ; so we had double reason to 
look for the ship. I can remember how excited I 
was, for my father was very good to me, and 
always kept one corner of his big sea-chest for 
me. 


118 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

‘‘ The boys in Salem used to watch on the 
wharf, whenever a ship was expected, and the 
minute it came in sight would run to the houses 
of those on board, with the news. If it were a 
sailor’s wife, she gave him a quarter ; if a mate’s, 
a half ; but from the captain’s wife a whole gold 
dollar was expected. One morning — we were 
at breakfast — a boy came running in, to tell us 
that the brig Cypher was in sight. He seemed to 
be in a great hurry, but that we did not think 
of till afterwards. 

“ My mother and I took an old glass of father’s 
and went up to the attic, where we had a good 
view of the harbor. Mother held the glass a long 
while, and grew suddenly pale. Then she said, 
short and quick, ‘ Take the glass. Your eyes are 
younger than mine. Do you see the flag?’ So I 
looked, and I did see it. ‘ O mother,’ I cried, 
‘ it’s at half-mast ! ’ For we were a sailor’s wife 
and daughter, and we knew what it meant. It 
said — that the captain was dead. 

“ It was so. By and by we learnt all about it. 
Partly from the mate, partly, but not till long 
afterward and by degrees, from Richard. It was 
on the return voyage. He was poisoned. They 
were trading for ivory on the African coast. He 


HOW THE WOBK-A-HAY WOBLD LOOKED. 119 ' 

had gone ashore with Richard, to settle matters 
with the native chief, who was very friendly, and 
offered them, as a farewell banquet, some rice and 
a drink of cocoanut-milk. The poison was in one 
of them. Richard did not like the native style of 
cooking, and, boy-like, would not eat. They set 
sail, but were only a few hours off when my 
father was taken sick and died. Afterwards, it 
was discovered that the captain of the last ship 
that had traded there had cheated them. I be- 
lieve there were no holes in the colored beads 
that traders used to bargain for ivory and gold- 
dust, and, to the natives, all white men were 
alike. 

“ They buried him there at sea. Richard tried 
to fling himself in, too, and it was only by main 
force that the sailors prevented him. He was 
only just through school, but he had begged so 
hard to go on the voyage that father yielded. 
For generations the men of our family had been 
sea-captains, but my brother never set foot on a 
ship again. 

“ I haven’t told you a very cheerful story, Kitty. 
I’m afraid it hasn’t improved matters much, and 
mine hasn’t such an excellent moral as had yours 
and Marion’s.” 


120 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“I can pick one out,” said Marion, thought- 
fully. “ If some manufacturer had not neglected 
to punch holes in those beads, your father 
wouldn’t have been murdered, nor your mother 
have died, nor you have been poor and had to 
earn your own living. O mother, do you suppose 
every single little glass bead in the world makes 
a difference ? ” 

“ I think that every thread forms a part. And 
if there is a weak place in the woof, it is fatally 
apt to strike against the weak spot in the warp. 
We cannot see nor know what is being woven. 
But this we do know — that it concerns us to 
make our own thread firm and strong, and just as 
fine as ever it may be.” 

“Why, I like your moral best of all, mother. 
It’s so — so kind of big and reasonable. But I 
wonder how that boy who ran to get the dollar, 
after seeing the flag at half-mast, felt, when he 
knew the whole story,” said Marion, indignantly. 

“Poor fellow!” replied her mother, gently. 
“ He was lost at sea.” 

“ Did mine have a moral ? ” asked Kitty, won- 
deringly. “What was it? I didn’t know.” 

No, she actually didn’t. 


CHAPTER VI. 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 

Abthur had not been at the house for some 
time. He had lately taken an outside office for 
such private practice as might offer, and had been 
rewarded already by several patients, whose grati- 
tude, however, — and that not in embarrassing 
quantity, — was his only fee, and who, being 
mostly Irishwomen, would no more have con- 
sulted him in the hospital than they would have 
ventured into the lion’s den; hospital being to 
them a place of dark and unhallowed practices, 
where ignorant young men and unfeeling old ones 
cut up such unfortunates as could be beguiled 
within. The remainder of the two hours pla- 
carded on the neat little sign as Dr. A. M. Ware’s 
office hours was spent in smoking and reading 
German, occasionally interrupted by a call from 
kindred spirits, to whom the dingy little office 
was fast becoming a place of rendezvous. 

121 


122 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


It was not an attractive place, either inside or 
out, being furnished with a mammoth desk, 
picked up second-hand; a lounge covered with 
moreen that in prehistoric days had been cherry 
color, — also second-hand ; the mirror pirated from 
Marion’s room, a big lounging-chair covered with 
the skin of a grizzly bear shot in a western trip, 
four straight-backed wooden chairs, and a small 
table ; the books thereon arranged masculine 
fashion, with the biggest on top, the line of direc- 
tion falling hazarc^ously near the small and less 
used books that formed the base. On the mantel- 
piece, over books and under table, in the shaggy 
hair of the bear skin, and on the wooden chairs, 
were burnt matches. There was something John- 
sonian in Dr. A. M. Ware’s practice of treasuring 
those little blackened splinters. The stove was 
at hand, as was the coal-hod ; the window was 
usually open, owing to the lingering fragrance of 
tobacco-smoke. But whenever and whenever he 
had occasion to use a match, the burnt remnant 
was never thrown away, the collection in his 
room being occasionally increased by an emptying 
out of his pockets. 

Nor was the view from the two dusty little 
windows more attractive, commanding as they 


AT THE HOSPITAL, 


123 


did, a vacant lot utilized for ash-barrels and the 
like, and as a play-ground for dirty children. 
However, the situation had its advantages, being 
in the neighborhood of not infrequent free fights, 
and Dr. Ware was likely to gain experience in 
the binding up of bruises and broken heads, if 
nothing more. 

But it was another cause than this practice that 
had prevented his coming out. Being in the 
neighborhood of Kitty’s school one day, as he 
was coming from a hospital .near by, he went 
in to explain his absence ; also that he would be 
out the next Sunday, and would bring somebody 
with him. 

“ Somebody named Armstrong,” said Kitty, 
who had received the unexpected call in perturba- 
tion of spirit, fearing lest her brother, in his un- 
welcome interest in her education, had come to 
put his oft-repeated threat into execution — of 
making ijpquiries in person concerning her pro- 
gress. 

“ Armstrong,” repeated Marion, reflectively. 
“Nobody we know. Did he say who he 
was ? ” 

“No-o, I guess not; he lives at the place 
where Arthur takes his meals, and had scarlet 


124 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


fever, so Arthur took him over to the hospital, 
and has been taking care of him ever since. He’s 
in town, going to school, and don’t know many 
people. His family live in the country, and he 
was all alone at his boarding-place.” 

“ With no one to look after him — poor little 
fellow!” said Mrs. Ware, in her sweet, motherly 
way. “ I’m glad he found a friend. Is he better 
now ? ” 

“ Yes, ’most well ; only his eyes are weak, and 
he can’t go back to school just yet. Arthur said 
he hoped we’d make it pleasant for him when he 
brought him out. He was shy, and had not been 
much in ladies’ society.” 

“So we will,” said Mrs. Ware, heartily, to 
whom it was recommendation enough that he was 
favored by her son Arthur. 

Two or three days later, Marion came into the 
hall, untying the gay bandanna with which she 
was accustomed to cover her dark locks while en- 
gaged in household duties, and speaking the 
while : — 

“ To-day is Saturday. I have swept our room, 
and am now a lady of leisure. Hence I propose 
a little expedition. I haven’t had a holiday for 
some time.” 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 


125 


“ ‘ I do admire 
Of womankind but one, 

And you are she, my dearest dear, — ’ 

assented Kitty, with considerable poetic license. 

“ I think it would be nice to go over to Arthur’s 
hospital while the Armstrong boy is there. He 
wouldn’t be so bashful about coming out if he 
knew us beforehand, and I dare say he’d like to 
have somebody besides the nurse to talk with.” 

“It would be pleasant,” agreed Mrs. Ware. 
“ Arthur would like it. You might take him a 
glass of crab-apple jelly, and tell him, from me, 
we hope to see him as soon as he is about.” 

“ I’ll take a book, too. Run down and get one, 
Kitty, can’t you ? One a boy would like.” 

“ Maybe I’d better not. Remember I brought 
you from the library last week the ‘ Recollections 
of Rev. Josiah Hopkins,’ when you wanted those 
of Irene Macgillicuddy. There is something so 
very slippery about names.” So, in the light of 
past events, Marion herself selected a volume 
dear to Arthur’s young days, and to most boys 
whose taste has not been perverted by a course of 
the biographies of street gamins. In the dwarf 
bookcase that contained Dr. Ware’s boyish library, 
Scott, Kingsley, and Marryat were well represen- 


126 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

ted, and it is pretty sure to be an honest, manly 
nature that delights in those manly writers. 

They found their way without difficulty to the 
hospital, a large white building on top of a hill. 
The man in attendance led the way to Dr. Ware’s 
office, and a familiar voice bade them “ Come in.” 

There were two young men in the room. One 
was on a high stool before the desk, reading from 
a book propped up on an erection of other books, 
so as to leave his hands free to be plunged into 
his pockets, except when his big and dirty pipe 
needed attention. The dirtier it grew, the more 
did Dr. Ware’s affection cleave unto it. The 
other young man was taller, bigger and was like- 
wise smoking. He was by the fire, and his pipe 
had apparently engrossed all his attention, for 
reading was impossible by reason of a green shade 
drawn well over his eyes. He looked around at 
the girls’ entrance, holding his pipe tenderly in 
his hand as Arthur greeted them, then arose 
slowly and deliberately as the latter turned to 
him. 

“ My friend. Dr. Dering,” he presented. 

There was no mistake. It was the hero of the 
umbrella ! His dress-coat was exchanged for a 
loose-fitting gray one; the blue eyes that had 


AT THE HOSPITAL, 


127 


looked at Marion before through glasses were 
now hidden by the blinder, but there could be no 
doubt as to his identity. The mortifying occur- 
rence of their first meeting rushed upon her with 
full force. It had nearly faded from her mind, 
in lack of material to feed it, but now the crim- 
son shame came back, in all its original strength. 
It was so characteristic of the girl that she 
should dislike, with all the fervor of which she 
was capable, any one who could shake her in her 
own self-esteem. 

Dr. Dering sat down again with the same delib- 
eration that characterized all his movements, and 
looked regretfully at his pipe. He made no effort 
to join in the talk. At least she could congratu- 
late herself on the foresight that had begged 
Annie not to mention her name. The home of 
the “ regular down-Easter ” was in the neighbor- 
hood of Mt. Desert, which accounted in part for 
the presence at that resort of a young man who 
had been dra^vn thither by the urgency of certain 
masculine friends, not by the attractions of femi- 
nine society. For, though not exactly “hating” 
girls, he certainly would never go out of his way 
to meet one, — a fact that, by one of the contradic- 
tions of girlhood, had been one of his attractions. 


128 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Another was the sterling character that, oftener 
than they are given credit for, girls recognize and 
appreciate. 

Dr. Dering’s blue eyes were covered by the 
shade, and so could not look at her with that hate- 
ful expression of quiet amusement. Marion was 
recovering herself a little, and considering that she 
could endure the young man’s presence for the 
few minutes it might be necessary. He seemed 
quite inoffensive, sitting there silent by the fire, 
without paying any attention to the young ladies, 
a fact which, though any other course would have 
been displeasing to the guilty consciousness of the 
elder, yet vexed her much. 

“ How is the Armstrong boy ? ” she inquired, 
presently. “We thought maybe he could see a 
little outside company, and came over to make 
him a call.” 

Arthur stared. 

“ Mother sent her love and some crab-apple jelly 
and will be very glad to see him at the house.” 

“ See whom ? ” 

“ The boy you’ve been taking care of — the one 
that’s had scarlet fever,” answered Marion, impa- 
tiently. “Why, don’t you remember, you went 
in yourself and told Kitty about him. I brought 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 


129 


over ‘ Mr. Midshipman Easy.’ I thought perhaps 
he’d like me to read to him.” She was undoing 
the jelly. If she had not been so occupied with 
that obstinate knot, she would have seen the ill- 
boding twitch of Arthur’s lip. Also that the young 
man by the fire had ceased stroking his pipe. 

“ I brought a picture-book, too — my Punch 
scrap-book. It’s so stupid getting well; and it 
must be lonesome for him, with nobody to run 
in,” added Kitty. 

“ Armstrong,” repeated Dr. Ware, reflectively. 
“ Now how on earth — may I ask who told you it 
was a boy ? ” 

“ You did. You said he had scarlet fever and 
was at school here.” 

“ Grown people may have it likewise, and it is 
apt to go pretty hard with them. Might I also 
inquire who said his name was Armstrong ? ” 

“ You told Kitty that, too.” Marion began to 
feel that she had somehow committed an egre- 
gious blunder. 

“Never mentioned the name. Don’t know 
a living soul named Armstrong. I said Dering 
distinctly. Also that he was at the Medical 
School. However, ‘all’s well that ends well.’ 
I’ve no doubt that Dering will like both the jelly 


130 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

and ‘ Mr. Midshipman Easy ’ as well as the myth- 
ical Armstrong, and we’re both coming out to- 
morrow.” 

“ O yes, I like Marryat,” said the voice by the 
fire ; “ but I’m afraid I can’t use my eyes to read 
just yet. I might look at the funny picture-book, 
though.” 

The tone was as deliberate to drawling as ever. 
There was not the trace of a smile to be seen. 
But the shade was no longer any comfort. On 
the contrary, it gave to Marion’s fear of being 
laughed at the added horror of the unseen. 

“It was a very natural mistake,” she said, in 
dignified tones. 

Any mistake which Marion acknowledged was 
always qualified by that assertion. 

“ O well, never mind,” said Kitty, who saw no 
reason why her sister should be looking so darkly 
at her. “ What difference does it make ? Bering 
— Armstrong, — they sound alike.” 

The possessor of the former name laughed — a 
short, pleasant laugh. 

“ Almost identical. But it makes a whole lot 
of difference. Miss Kitty. If my name were 
Armstrong, and I were a little boy, people would 
be sorry for me, and would come and see me. 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 


131 


They would send me nice things, and would read 
story-books to me, and bring me picture-books, 
and would pet me and tell me stories and sing to 
me. I love to be sung to. But my name is 
Dering, and I’m a big man. So nobody cares.” 

“Armstrong or Dering, it’s all the same. It 
was meant for my friend. My mother and sisters 
join with me in asking you to come out and see 
us,” said Arthur, with a dignity that sat very 
well upon the young doctor. 

Thus appealed to, there was nothing for Marion 
to do but murmur polite assent, inwardly deter- 
mined to do no more than the barest hospitality 
required to give him any desire to repeat his 
visit. Mercifully, he was in the army, and his 
leave could not last forever. 

“ I’m going to show my sisters round. Won’t 
you come with us?” said Arthur, rising. 

The sigh was audible with which Dr. Dering, in 
his turn, murmured polite assent. Not that there 
was anything rude in his manner, though the sigh 
could not have escaped unnoticed even one whose 
ears were less sharp than Marion’s. But, with 
the best wish in the world to stigmatize the 
hardly smothered reluctance as down-east lack of 
manners, it struck even her as naivete., as the boy 


132 


FOIiCED ACQUAINT AN CE8. 


she had thought to find might have behaved. Or, 
perhaps, it was — but this did not come to her 
then, nor till long afterward, when she herself 
had grown and widened to understanding and 
appreciation — the native simplicity and direct- 
ness of the man’s nature, fostered by country 
breeding and a singleness of purpose that had 
been his from boyhood — nay, that had been born 
with him and grown with his growth. It showed 
beneath the refinement of education and later 
associations ; the poise and self-reliance of his 
profession, and the inevitable ease and polish be- 
stowed by army life. It was just this, and the 
extreme gentleness of his bearing, oddly attrac- 
tive in so big a man, that were Dr. Dering’s 
greatest charm. 

She even elected to find in his lagging step an 
ill-bred display of reluctance, as they fell behind 
Arthur and Kitty. Then there began to be an- 
other thing to annoy her. Ready as her tongue 
usually was, she could now think of nothing to 
say. Not that the occasion found her absolutely 
destitute of ideas, but those that did occur to her 
were instantly rejected, as being silly or unsuit- 
able, sure to call forth more disagreeable, drawl- 
ing speeches, “ making fun of her.” 


AT THE HOSPITAL, 


133 


“ Lucky he don’t know I’m the same one who 
made such a fool of myself once before,” thought 
she, with added comfort in the reflection. It was 
the young man who broke a silence that was get- 
ting uncomfortable. 

“ I’m afraid I frightened you the other night. 
Miss Ware,” he began. “Miss Annie said you 
thought you wouldn’t wait — that it was only a 
minute’s walk, or something of the kind. I did 
not want to force myself on you, but I could not 
let you go alone at that hour, you know, so I fol- 
lowed, to see that you got to your destination all 
right.” 

“Who — who told you it was I?” queried 
Marion ; this time without any reflection as to the 
suitability of the remark. 

“ I saw that the young lady I was to escort was 
the one who had handed me an umbrella, and I 
went to get it. When I got back — this foot 
does make me lag — you were gone. I did not 
know you were Arthur’s sister, but, then, I did 
not know Arthur himself so well at that time. 
He saw the umbrella in my room one day, and 
said there was not another like it in existence, 
— that it was an heirloom. I’m sorry to have 
robbed you, unwittingly, of a valued relic. I’ll 
bring it out with me to-morrow.” 


134 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“Don’t. That is — of no consequence. I’m 
sorry — given you so much trouble — ” 

“ But Arthur told me it had been in your 
family for centuries,” pursued Dr. Dering, tran- 
quilly. “ He suspects me of having purloined it. 
I don’t like my character to rest under such a 
stigma.” From the gravity of face and voice 
one might have believed he was talking in sober 
earnest. 

Reckless desire to change the unpleasant sub- 
ject led Marion to show interest in that which 
she had firmly resolved not to — Dr. Dering’s self. 

“ Have you been very ill ? ” she asked, abruptly. 

“ Rather, yes.” 

“It must be stupid for you not to use your 
eyes.” 

“ It might be worse. If it had not been for 
your brother and Coutts, I should have been 
blind.” 

“ Really blind — how dreadful ! Did you know 
it — did they tell you ? ” 

“ Yes, I asked them.” 

“ What did they say ? ” and the interest was 
not feigned. 

“They said it was a pretty uneven chance 
against my having my eyesight ; that it would de- 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 


135 


pend a good deal on my general condition. But 
I did better than they had expected ; and there is 
no danger now, if I take care.” 

“ What would you liave done ? ” 

Involuntarily the picture of the big, strong man 
by her side, blind and groping, arose before her. 
His profession, life itself, for all it held of good, 
at an end. In the queer way one’s thoughts are 
tangled, the thought of the blind giant, Amyas 
Leigh, came to her. She had taken up the book 
that morning. She did not know herself how 
deep and tender was the pity in her words. But 
it was not Dr. Dering’s ears that were bandaged. 

‘‘ What could I have done,” he said, simply, 
“ but said, ‘ It must be borne.’ ” 

But all that would have been contained in that 
phrase Marion did not know till she had heard 
something of the young man’s story. 

The inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had grown 
accustomed to Dr. Ware’s sturdy figure, with its 
independent stride, in a spot where a man was as 
rare a vision as in the Princess’ domain. But the 
spectacle of two young men was a genuine sensa- 
tion where, for lack of the real article, the public 
had been obliged to put up with a spurious imita- 
tion — tlie Duncan boy. Only in his breast was 


136 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

the sight fraught with discomfort, for he unhap- 
pily met them on his way to Sunday-school, with 
his lesson-book and hymnal under his arm, though 
he did his best to shuffle these out of sight. 
Much against his will did he wend his weekly 
way thither ; but there was no evading the man- 
dates of his reverend papa this one day out 
of the seven. Enforced dutifulness and godli- 
ness he did his best to counteract by doing 
his innocent little best, on the other six days, 
to be dissipated, in a big-boy just-see-how-smart- 
I-am fashion. 

And also did this apparition create havoc in the 
heart of Miss Faulkner, who had once divided 
her favor between young Duncan and the Japan- 
ese youth, but who had transferred her affections 
some time ago to Dr. Ware, finding it convenient 
to run into the house shortly after she saw him 
enter, and — to her unvarying surprise — finding 
him there again. Happy Miss Faulkner when 
having been, perforce, invited, on one or two oc- 
casions, to tea, the young man had escorted her 
home. Her friendship toward Marion — which 
was far from being reciprocated — received fresh 
fuel from these happy chances. Now, when Dr. 
Ware’s distinguished-looking friend appeared 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 137 

likewise on the scene, she was in danger of losing 
what few wits she had. 

“ I like him, though he does seem to think I’m 
a little girl,” said Kitty, after their guests had de- 
parted. ‘‘ Gertie likes him, too. He took care of 
her mother when she was so ill last summer. He 
was awfully good, and sat up nights with her, and 
wouldn’t go away till she was well. One day her 
father was in one of his rages because his collar 
wasn’t stiff enough, and she in bed not able to 
lift her head. Dr. Dering came in just then, and 
gave him one look. Mr. Meredith stopped short, 
muttered something, laughed foolishly, and got 
out of the room. Ever since then he’s hated 
him.” 

“I like him too,” said Mrs. Ware. “Arthur 
was telling me about him while you were playing 
after dinner. His people are small farmers, and 
their place some distance from any village. They 
have the ordinary education of country people. 
All the advantages this boy had were those af- 
forded by the district school, often cut short by 
the necessity of helping at home. He set out to 
be a doctor, without the encouragement of seeing 
even a hard path. He got together a little money 
in what time he could spare from grinding farm- 


138 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


work — hunting woodchucks for ten cents bounty, 
chopping wood for a neighbor in winter when he 
could sometimes be spared. With fifteen hours 
work a day, he had not much time, even had he 
had large opportunity. And all the while he was 
fitting himself for college. How the boy did that, 
harder even than the pecuniary difficulty, I do 
not see. It was a struggle all through the next 
four years. He was out during the winter to 
teach, or, that failing, he would go with the lum- 
bermen down his own rivers. One winter he cut 
ice. He had help — some scholarship — through 
the Medical School. Arthur knew him slightly 
there, three years ago. He was then in the grad- 
uating class. He entered the army, and was 
ordered out West, where he has been ever since 
till he came on now, and, after a visit home, was 
spending his leave studying up on special topics. 
He is expecting every day to receive orders, and 
his one haunting dread is that he will be ordered 
to Newport.” 

Which Marion heard with a sigh of relief, but 
said not a word. 

True to his word. Dr. Dering had carried the 
fateful green umbrella under his arm, with as 
much nonchalance as though it were of Lyons 


AT THE HOSPITAL. 


139 


best manufacture. The familiar and dreaded sight 
was the last touch necessary to complete Marion’s 
hatred of “Arthur’s friend,” as she always after- 
ward alluded to him, ignoring his own personality, 
and refusing to recognize any interest he might 
have for her other than that bestowed from her 
brother’s warm regard. 

Whether Arthur ever learned how Auntie Jim 
had come into his friend’s possession, Marion could 
never determine. But he pretended he knew all 
about it, and for long after made his sister miser- 
able by quoting her own words to him on divers 
occasions : — 

“ How can you mortify me so before my friends 
by insisting on taking that dreadful umbrella ! ” 
. . . “ I really wish, Marion, you could be per- 
suaded to carry something a little smaller and of 
a less conspicuous color.” . . . “ Marion, if you 
ever leave that again where my friend Bering — 
Bering of all people — can see it, I shall cry ! ” 

Marion herself could have cried with mortifica- 
tion and anger, as, worst of all, her brother, at 
every visit to the sitting-room closet, would seize 
the old umbrella, shake it out, and, contemplating 
its vast expanse, remark, with a solemn shake of 
the head : — 


140 


FORCED ACqUAlNrANCES. 


“ Well, it is beyond my comprehension how a 
young woman, with any pretension to being ‘ nice,’ 
could have lent this to my friend ! ” 

So morbidly sensitive did the girl become on 
this subject that she no longer dared make any 
effort to remove Auntie Jim from her path, while 
she tried to meet Arthur’s gibes with a stolid in- 
difference that did not deceive him in the least. 

“ I suppose Dr. Dering has told everybody what 
a fool I made of myself, but I’d rather all the 
world had known sooner than Arthur,” thought 
Marion, bitterly, sensitive to being laughed at, as 
only a person can be who habitually laughs at 
other people. 


CHAPTER VII. 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES. 

“ There is no reason why I should be the one. 
I always sweep our room — though I don’t mind 
that so much, because you’d leave it dirtier than 
you found it. I walked home from church last 
Sunday with Effie Faulkner, and you left me alone 
the other day with Mr. Dysart. You might take 
3^our share of the horrid things,” said Marion, 
severely. 

“ There is no need of either of us going,” re- 
plied Kitty. 

“We can’t both decline, but there is no use in 
making two people miserable. You might be the 
victim this time.” 

“ I shouldn’t think of going,” said Kitty, with 
smooth decisiveness. 

“It’s horrid of you. So selfish always to get 
out of anything that entails any exertion. Didn’t 
you ever think that it throws the burden on some- 
body else — but of course not. You never think 
of anything.” 


141 


142 


FOBCED A CQ UAINTANCES. 


“It would be interesting to know how many 
times you have said that. You are the elder — 
much the elder. It is your place to go.” 

“ If I am, it’s no reason why you should poke 
everything that don’t please your highness out of 
your own path into mine.” 

“ I shall not go,” repeated Kitty, with a certain 
suggestion of forbearance, as one who is aware she 
has to do with dynamite. 

“I wouldn’t be as lazy and selfish and conceited 
as you are for anything,” burst out Marion, hotly, 
angered fully as much by tone as words. “I — 
I — ” 

“ There, take time. I suppose you think your- 
self a smart angel ? ” 

“ Hi, good people, where are you all ? ” called a 
voice from below at this juncture. “Mother?” 
None of the family ever entered the house with- 
out calling to her. Grown man though Arthur 
was, he had not lost the childish trick that accom- 
panied his step on the threshold. 

“ My boy ? ’’ for, on the threshold or anywhere 
else, the grown man was always that to the mother. 

“Come up; we’re in the hall,” called Marion. 
“I didn’t hear the door open,” as her brother 
appeared head and shoulders above the balusters. 


SUBUEBAN FESTIVITIES. I43 

He shook two fingers all around, dropped the 
evening paper into Mrs. Ware’s lap, then lit his 
pipe and betook himself to the lounge, in prepara- 
tion for a “ cultus-wah-wah,” an Indian expression 
borrowed from my friend Dering,” whose vocabu- 
lary had been considerably enriched during his 
Western sojourn. 

“ Now go ahead. What’s happened ? ” 

“ Nothing. Geography to the contrary, the 
poles are not the only places in the world where 
everything is at an absolute stand-still.” 

“ I met Mrs. Drew by the gate. Didn’t know 
but what she might have been in.” 

“To return mother’s call? Oh no, she never 
returns anything. Besides, she’s head over ears 
in business lately. She has taken up housekeep- 
ing by way of a change from Associated Charities 
and the education of the Indian, and she and 
Mrs. Eliot have been attending lectures on cook- 
ing. Last Sunday she was flying all over the 
neighborhood with a plate of mince-meat that 
seemed to lack something. She had had no time 
to attend to it during the week. Mother tasted 
it, and suggested that the nameless longing might 
be gratified by cooking it.” 

“ Borrowed anything lately ? ” 


144 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“ Nothing but last night’s paper. It must be 
convenient to have ‘ views ’ at times. She is too 
liberal to go to church, and too stingy to belong 
to the book-club ; so she gets out of contributions 
to the former and of dues to the latter. But on 
specious pretexts she is always present at the sew- 
ing-circle, and borrows books right and left of the 
neighbors. She sha’n’t have one of ours, though, 
if she goes down on her knees for it.” 

“ It would be such a novel position for her tliat 
it would perhaps be the act of a home mission- 
ary to lead her on to it,” suggested Dr. Ware. 
“ Methought I heard words of contention as 1 
came up the stair. It is not possible that you 
and Kitty had disagreed ? ” 

“ Marion wants me to go to a stupid old affair 
at Mr. Duncan’s to-night, and I won’t!” Kitty 
uncurled sufficiently to explain. When not lying 
down, she was in the habit of coiling her lithe 
figure into the biggest chair at hand. 

“ How unfairly you put things ! Now, Arthur, 
I appeal to you. We have both been asked over 
to-night — the corner house, you know. One of 
us must go, in civility. I am willing to do my 
share, and, of course, there is a great deal Kitty 
could not do. But she might take some of the 
tiresome things on herself when she can.” 


SUBUBBAN FESTIVITIES. 


145 


“ That’s fair,” nodded Arthur, judicially. 
“ I’ll decide for you. Draw lots.” 

“ Certainly, if it would amuse you,” replied 
Kitty, serenely ; “ but I sha’n’t go if I do get the 
shorter one.” 

“ Yes, you will, my little dear, if I have to carry 
you there in a meal-bag. Let me have a bit of 
the margin, will you, please, mother? Thank 
you. Now, come on — no peeping there, Kitty ! ” 

And, according to her lugubrious prediction, 
she did draw the shorter one. 

“I knew I should. I never wished for any- 
thing in my life, or broke a lucky-bone, that the 
exact opposite didn’t happen. Noav, if 1 want 
anything very particularly, I wish for the oppo- 
site, and then I know I shall get what I really 
want. I am a person without luck.” 

“ You are a person without sense,” commented 
Marion, scornfully. “Do you think you can 
cheat luck, too ? ” 

By dint of her brother’s threats, her mother’s 
persuasions, and her sister’s promise to take upon 
herself the next social trial, Mr. Duncan’s invited 
guest yielded, it thus having taken the united 
efforts of the family to induce her to do that 
which did not promise her pleasure. 


146 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ Has Dr. Dering gone back yet ? 

“ He isn’t going yet awhile. He’s applied for 
farther leave on account of his eyes.” 

“ They’re not worse ? ” 

No ; but they need treatment. He’ll proba- 
bly be here some time longer.” 

“ But what can he do ? He can’t study I ” 
Marion spoke as though she deplored Dr. Dering’s 
lack of forethought. 

“Attend lectures; that’s about all — he can’t 
read or write much. He wanted to get out West 
again, too. He likes the life there, and hates a 
city. Then he misses the mess, and says he 
agrees with Lever that it is the perfection of 
social life. He can’t ride, — if he could afford it ; 
he’s too heavy for most horses, and he can’t walk 
any distance. And he don’t know many fellows 
in town. It’s dull work for him. I asked him to 
come out with me this afternoon.” 

“ But, dull as it was, he did not care to,” said 
Marion, bitterly. She would have been more 
vexed if he had. 

“No; there was an autopsy he preferred.” 

It was so brotherly that Dr. Ware could see 
nothing derogatory to Marion in this speech. He 
would himself have preferred an interesting post 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES. 147 

mortem to an hour or two of ladies’ society, so he 
had no conception of why his sister should say 
with such sudden fierceness, “ I wish it were his 
own ! ” 

Arthur fulfilled his threat of carrying Kitty to 
the corner house, in so far as escorting her, on his 
homeward way, to the gate, or where the gate 
would have been had not it been put down cellar, 
where it formed the framework of a raft on which 
to paddle to the furnace when the brook trans- 
formed the under regions to a lagoon. Nobody 
in Sleepy Hollow felt any particular desire to 
visit Venice. Home experience had taught them 
all about it. 

Maggie was to call for Kitty at ten ; for though 
Garrick Street in its entire length was little more 
than a lane, and nothing had disturbed its security 
since it sprang into existence (it would have been 
a sadly mistaken burglar who had made an 
attempt there), Kitty would not willingly have 
ventured to her own gate alone after dark. Not 
more on account of the marauders, and ghosts, 
and drunken men, and hobgoblins, and the horri- 
ble shapeless things that fill the gloom, than 
simply from the fact that it was dark. Arthur 
asserted she would be afraid if she put her head 
inside of a box. 


148 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


In the sitting-room, Marion was reading “ Mis- 
tress and Maid” to her mother. Mrs. Ware was 
darning Kitty’s stockings. In the kitchen, Maggie 
was reading the New York Ledger.^ in which her 
soul — or that which passe th for a soul with the 
Hibernian race — delighted. Half aloud was she 
reading, but, happily, there was no one to hear 
the monotonous droning but Beauty, on the 
hearth, asleep, since she had eaten her regular 
supper and there was nothing at hand to steal. 
Food dishonestly obtained was eaten by that con- 
scienceless cat with an appetite supposed to be 
won only by the sweat of the brow. 

The front door opened suddenly. It was about 
an hour since Kitty had been left at the scene of 
the presumable entertainment when she entered, 
red and breathless from her short but violent race. 
Yes, Kitty could hurry when spurred by terror. 
Without volunteering a word, or attempting a 
reply to the exclamations and questions of her 
mother and sister, she flung her hat into one 
chair, her sacque into another, her rubbers into 
the corner, and herself on the sofa. 

“I have done my duty by society. If I had 
waited for Maggie, she would have escorted a 
lunatic home,” she finally deigned to say. 


SUBUBBAN FESTIVITIES. I49 

“ What happened ? ” inquired her mother, with 
some anxiety. 

“ Nothing ; guess that was the matter,” reflec- 
tively. 

“What did you tell them? What was the 
trouble ? Why, what will they think of your 

leaving in that style ! It’s disgraceful ! ” That 

was from Marion, of course. If Kitty were to 
represent the family in this way, any sacrifice on 
her part would be preferable. 

“Think what they want to, and didn’t tell 

them anything. Only put on my things and 

departed. I don’t think anybody saw, but if the 
whole company had been standing in a row, it 
would have made no difference. I won’t go to 
another place I don’t want to, even if Arthur does 
do me up in a meal-bag and take me there on his 
shoulders.” 

“ Horrid ! You ought to be ashamed ! ” 

“ What was it, dear ? Did anything reall)’’ 
happen ? ” 

For before disapproval must always come, with 
Mrs. Ware, sympathy for a child of hers who was 
hurt. Her motherly love was all up in arms at 
the mere suggestion and the divine instinct of 
motherhood, to “kiss and make well.” Well did 


150 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the old rabbis say, “God could not be every- 
where, and so he made mothers.” 

“Was it very bad? — couldn’t you stand it?” 
Marion was in no danger of being misled by love. 
Curiosity, too, was overcoming vexation. “ What 
did happen?” 

“Nothing,” replied Kitty, shaking her head, 
gloomily. 

“Nothing at all?” incredulously. “Didn’t 
you dance ? ” 

“Oh, dear, no! Mr. Duncan doesn’t approve 
of dancing.” 

“ Did you play cards ? ” 

. “ Mr. Duncan doesn’t approve of cards.” 

“ What did you do, then ? ” impatiently. “ Sit 
dumb and stare at each other — or does Mr. Dun- 
can disapprove of that?” 

“Would that he did. We did just that for 
some time. Then we played ‘ Go-Bang.’ ” 

“ What’s that ? ” 

“Some kind of game, — worse than its name, 
even. Then Miss Faulkner sang a song, — a sad 
one, I presume, for I saw Mrs. Eliot wiping her 
eyes. And Mr. Dysart sang a funny song. The 
chorus was : — 

“ ‘ Hi ricketty baa low 
Cock-a-doodle-do I * 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES, 151 

And he with gray hairs! I suppose that was 
humorous, because everybody was laughing. I 
tried to, too, because I did wish to be polite,” said 
Kitty, pathetically, “but I could not, anyhow, till 
I happened to think how disgusted Arthur would 
look, and then I laughed as hard as anybody.” 

“ Who were there ? ” 

“Everybody. And Effie Faulkner, besides. 
She is rather outside the pale of ordinary human- 
you. know. She was with the little Jap- 
anese.” 

“ Where was the Duncan boy ? ” 

“ In the corner. If anybody spoke to him, he 
answered politely. And the rest of the time 
looked as though his papa had set him there. 
Once he smiled at one corner of his mouth, but it 
only made me feel, as a small and very vulgar 
fraction of the company, that I ought to apologize 
to him for presuming to exist.” 

“But didn’t you speak to any one — or any one 
speak to you ? Where were you ?” 

“ On the sofa. Yes, they were all very pleas- 
ant, and I did my best to represent the family 
creditably. Effie Faulkner sat down beside me 
and said, ‘Where’s your sister? I’m so awfully 
sorry not to see her here. I’m so disappointed I 


152 FORCED A CQ UAINTANCES. 

don’t know what to do,’ and a lot more rattle that 
I did not hear, because I was wondering why she 
will powder and rouge so, with her lovely com- 
plexion ; and that made me think of arsenic for 
the complexion, and that, quite naturally, of Wil- 
kie Collins’ story about arsenic-poisoning — ‘The 
Law and the Lady.’ And so I wasn’t quite think- 
ing of what I was saying. I did not mean to say 
it, — it was like the Palace of Truth, — but I 
really did say, ‘He came to the gate. He had 
to get back to the hospital, so he could not come 
even if he had wanted to, but he said he’d rather 
go to his own post-mortem than come in.’ She 
got red, and did not say much more. Then she 
went.” 

“ Any one else ? ” Marion was enjoying their 
neighbor’s entertainment, if Kitty had not. 

“Mrs. Eliot. She said, ‘How enjoyable it is, 
such a little oasis as this, in “the dreary inter- 
course of daily life.” ’ I was not sure whether 
she were quoting poetry — I often feel that doubt 
in regard to her, — or whether it was simply that 
she and Mr. Duncan had been talking together. 
I still was resolved to do my duty by my family 
and society, and, wishing to say something of the 
same kind, to show her I was another kindred 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES, 153 

spirit, I said, ‘ O yes, I have laughed with those 
who’ve laughed, and wept with those who’ve 
wept.’ She got kind of red, too. Then she 
went.” 

“Who else?” 

“Your friend, Mr. Dysart. I think he took me 
for you, — though, if he did, his vision can’t be 
any better than his hearing. You have always 
encouraged him, by laughing at his worst jokes. 
I cannot, and see no reason why I should trouble 
myself to force a smile. He was heading for me, 
a look in his eye that meant either a pun or some 
endless story. Then I went.” 

“ And high time. O Kitty, you’re not fit to go 
into society alone.” 

“ I didn’t exactly clamor to go. That is not 
all. As I ran home, it popped all at once into 
my head that, in the sudden exigency, I hadn’t 
got the lines straight, — I thought Mrs. Eliot 
looked queer, — and that what I had said was, 
‘ I had laughed at those who wept, and wept for 
those that laughed.’ ” 

“O Kitty, Kitty, how I wish I had been 
there ! ” 

But Mrs. Ware, though she could not forbear 
laughing, shook her head. 


154 FOnCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“You should not have done it. You are too 
old to run home when things don’t please you. It 
would not have hurt you to have stayed longer, 
and then said good-bye in a proper manner.” 

“ Society would be shaken to its foundations 
if everybody should put on his hat and de- 
part if he were having a stupid time,” said 
Marion, not loath to add her little word of disap- 
proval. 

“ O well, never mind. Guess I haven’t given 
it much of a joggle, so what difference does it 
make ? ” 

Marion’s fate came upon her a few days later, 
in the form of an invitation to join a Literary 
Society. It was from Mrs. Eliot, who was doing 
her best to elevate the little community of Sleepy 
Hollow, without taking into due consideration 
that misfortune had reduced the otherwise active 
intelligence of Garrick Street to well nigh apathy, 
and that Kean Street, in its state of humble and 
vulgar prosperity, looked slightingly upon culture 
as on a lower plane, with the little god of love, in 
its inability to “ turn the spit, spit, spit.” 

Mrs. Eliot’s book-club, Mrs. Eliot’s occasional 
afternoons for “ talks ” or “ papers,” Mrs. Eliot’s 
production now and then of lights in the world 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES. 


155 


of Progress, Higher Education, and Woman’s 
Rights, Mrs. Eliot’s projected course of Shak- 
speare readings, — which was never anything more 
than projected, because at this point Sleepy Hol- 
low rebelled, and refused to have culture crammed 
down its throat, — had been born and thriven as 
well as other fledglings in an uncongenial atmos- 
phere. The book-club came nigh to foundering 
on Mrs. Drew, who proved a veritable snag in the 
circulation of magazines. In the selection of 
these there had been lack of harmony. Mr. Dun- 
can wanted the Andover Review and the Eelecticy 
which was not to the taste of the butchers and 
bakers of Kean Street, who desired the Chimney 
Corner., the Sporting Times., and Frank Leslie’s 
Monthly ; while the voice of their wives was for 
Godey’s., the Waverley., and the Cricket on the 
Hearth^ with its premium of a work-box or tea- 
set. Mrs. Eliot wanted the North American 
Review and the WomarHs Journal; Mrs. Ware, 
Harper’s; Mrs. Drew, the Chautauquan., which 
was always the last read of her supply ; though 
she paid no subscription, she was a self-consti- 
tuted honorary member. Marion, her beloved 
Punch ; and Effie Faulkner, Demorest’ s. Garrick 
Street turned up its aristocratic nose higher than 


156 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


ever at the literary taste — or lack of taste — of 
Kean Street ; but as the purse of the latter had 
supplied a goodly share of the funds, it felt 
obliged to concede in proportion. With such a 
varied supply, it was Sleepy Hollow’s own fault 
if it did not become as many-sided as Goethe. 

The Literary Society was an outgrowth of the 
book-club, and Marion was pleased at the project; 
for at bottom she really respected and rather liked 
Mrs. Eliot. She was fond of books, had read a 
great deal, and, moreover, was glad of the pros- 
pect of an occasional “outing,” as she deemed 
purely social festivities forbidden her. The one 
experience that had ushered in the new year had 
seemed to her an ill-boding omen of what the 
whole season would be if she tried to go out with- 
out clothes or carriage. No ; if she could not go 
as she wished, in radiant attire and another kind 
of coach-and-four than the dingy yellow omnibus, 
lumbering through suburban slush and mud like 
a gigantic, dirty pumpkin, then w’ould she stay at 
home in her own chimney corner. Thus dictated 
Marion’s pride. And so, whether foolishly or 
not, she had declined more than one invitation, 
and “ regretted her inability ” to meet her friends 
at several social gatherings, without reflectiilg 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES. 157 

that friendship, like everything else, needs fuel to 
feed it. 

Alas for her hopes on this evening! Like 
father, like son. The Literary Society proved 
itself the worthy offspring of the book-club. 
The elements that found themselves in Mrs. 
Eliot’s pretty little parlor were sadly mixed. 
Appropriately behind the hostess was seated her 
shadow and echo, who, having had “ no time ” to 
change her dress, appeared in a morning gown of 
black, dotted with red, like a geometrical nose- 
bleed. In their neighborhood was an English- 
man, recently settled in the backwoods, with a 
bearing suggestive of that of the famous Person 
of Burton : — 

Whose manners were very uncertain, 

When they said, ‘ How d’you do ? ’ 

He replied, ‘ Who are you ? ’ ” 

Mr. Dysart sat near, his presence reminding 
Marion of a debating society she and Arthur had 
organized when children, and which they had 
invited a deaf and dumb lad to join. Whatever 
was said in the course of the evening had to be 
immediately shouted to Mr. Dysart at length. 
The young Japanese was there, being too polite 


158 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


to decline Mrs. Eliot’s invitation ; though even if 
he had not been graced with the courtesy of his 
race, he was zealous of missing no opportunity of 
acquiring knowledge of the English language, 
literature, and customs. He must have carried a 
queer idea of all three back to his native land if 
he took Sleepy Hollow’s as a sample. Mr. Dun- 
can was present, but his son was not. If any of 
the unsophisticated met that wild and uncon- 
trolled spirit the next morning, and in an ill- 
judged moment referred to his absence, he would 
have to tell, yet with hinted reservations, as being 
too dark a tale for innocence, of how he had 
passed the evening instead. Of billiard-playing 
with knowing young men about town ; of “ look- 
ing in ” at — the Duncan boy never went ” to — 
the theatre ; of a late supper, with wild attendant 
revelry. Yet, truth to tell, these innocent fables 
deceived no one. It would be more likely than 
not that such an evening had been spent with his 
mamma and papa — the latter a wet blanket to 
hilarity — and that he had gone to bed at half- 
past eight. Miss Faulkner came because she 
expected to find “ Don Juan,” and, being disap- 
pointed, was rather out of temper. Not much — 
she could not be much of anything. 


SUBURBAN FESTIVITIES, 159 

These Brahmins, with a few others of their 
caste, had gathered at one end of the room. 
Such pariahs of Kean Street as had ventured in, 
remembering that “in union there is strength,” 
were in a knot at the other. They were almost 
unanimously arrayed in black silk gowns, with 
white neckties ; and although they did not take 
much part in the discussion, a murmur and rustle 
of the aforesaid silk betokened their appreciation 
of the funny stories and telling anecdotes with 
which Mr. Dysart from time to time regaled the 
company. When politely questioned by the host- 
ess, they agreed with the last speaker. 

Not so did the representatives of culture, of 
brains, of ruined fortune — in short, of Garrick 
Street — comport themselves. There was strife as 
to who should talk oftenest and longest, an appar- 
ant objection to discussing the object of the meet- 
ing, and emulation as to which should wander 
farthest from the subject upon which it had 
pleased him to begin ; in which last the palm was 
unquestionably borne by Mr. Duncan, who began 
with the topic of general local interest, the drain- 
age, and ended with the religion of the Hindoos. 
At about the time the meeting should have 
thought of breaking up, and the delegation from 


160 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

Kean Street was looking sleepy, the Literary 
Society began to discuss the author with whom 
it was to open its career. Mr. Dysart, oblivious 
that all were not as he, roared for Thoreau ; Mrs. 
Eliot, seconded by Mrs. Drew, suggested Harriet 
Martineau; Mr. Duncan considered Emerson 
most worthy of the society’s attention ; the Eng- 
lishman contradicted everything that had been 
said, sneered at the Concord philosopher, and 
proposed Kuskin. 

By this time a general gloom had overspread 
the faces of the remainder of Garrick Street; 
while Kean Street, having never before even 
heard the above-mentioned names, looked abso- 
lutely frightened at the improving programme 
laid out for them, when some Mirabeau in the 
background struck in for Rhoda Broughton. 
None knew the author of this hazardous sugges- 
tion, and she was probably overwhelmed the next 
moment by her own temerity. 

Then arose a general hubbub, in which Kean 
Street found its voice, and, true to its colors, 
evidently agreed with the last speaker, though it 
did not dare utter the heresy other than by a 
rustle. Conspicuous were the indignant tones of 
Rev. Mr. Duncan in a diatribe against such per- 


SUBUBBAN FESTIVITIES. 


161 


nicious literature, from which, by a natural and 
graceful transition, he glided into Mormonism. 
At last Miss Martineau was decided upon, in 
deference to Mrs. Eliot, as hostess. Kean Street 
could wake up — inwardly resolving that the 
introduction to Miss Martineau should not be fol- 
lowed up by farther acquaintance — and Garrick 
Street could swim its homeward way, for a thaw 
had been assisting the brook. 

“ Did you — have — anything — to eat ? ” mur- 
mured a sleepy voice, its owner aroused by the 
entrance of Marion and a light. 

“ Perish the thought. Not even a Graham 
gem. It was pure reason and soul. Kitty, be 
thankful you drew the shorter lot ! 


CHAPTER VIIL 


SLEEPY hollow’s EVENT. 

A WEEK or two later, Marion was in the din- 
ing-room, absorbed in the last pages of “West- 
ward Ho.” In her lap was a plate of candy. 
About her shoulders a gay afghan ; for, notwith- 
standing her proximity to the stove, little shivers 
disported themselves ever and anon down her 
back, and her hands and feet were numb. This 
condition of things had obtained for the last few 
days, and had produced a marked effect upon 
Marion, who loved .warmth like a tropical crea- 
ture; she now proved the truth of a person’s 
character being affected by his environment by 
falling into a state of chronic irritation, sometimes 
suppressed, sometimes, unluckily for her family, 
unsuppressed. 

For a cold snap had succeeded the thaw, and 
the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow were experi- 
encing another phase of existence in sham-built 
houses. The breakfast-table greeting had re- 
162 


SLEEPY HOLLOW’S EVENT. 163 

cently been, “Where did it come in last night?” 
the after-breakfast occupation, shouldering pails 
and mops and all the cloths that could be laid 
hands on, and going over the house, baling out, 
mopping, wiping up, and deploring injury to car- 
pet and paper. If, in time of thaw, the ubiquitous 
brook had appeared up attic, it would have sur- 
prised no one. Also was it the duty of the mas- 
culine members of the family to put on rubber 
boots — if, happily, wading would suffice — and 
plunge in to furnace and coal-bin. Otherwise, 
to construct ingenious causeways and stepping- 
stones of gates, step-ladders, and boxes. 

There had been untoward accidents in these 
days, when the waters were upon the earth. 
Two little boys of Kean Street were paddling 
about on a raft down cellar, and enjoying the 
novel amusement mightily, when their craft, strik- 
ing against one of the stone posts, foundered, 
and the shipwrecked mariners nearly achieved 
the paradox of being drowned on dry land. 
Arthur went down to inspect the scene, and, by 
some mischance, the usual glasses were not in 
their place. Peering down with near-sighted 
eyes, he could discern nothing but the usual dark 
level, and, calling cheerfully out, “ It’s all right — 


164 


FORCED ACqUAINTANCES. 


I don’t see what you people are making such a 
row about!” jumped off the last two steps to 
find himself knee-deep in muddy water. The 
mysterious disappearance of Beauty was followed 
by two days’ search on the part of her mistress in 
vain; a search that, though her affections clave 
to the dear animal, and she had no doubt but 
what the dark waste of waters were somewhere 
rolling over her, was yet conducted with the 
calmness that it would be well for us all to 
muster in hours of doubt and darkness. The 
lost darling was finally discovered in a remote 
corner of the cellar, curled up on the chopping- 
block, where, in accordance with her usual man- 
ner of existence, there being nothing at hand to 
eat or steal, she had been contentedly dozing 
since the floods came and cut off her retreat. 
Being too lazy to make her situation known, she 
might have stayed there on her pillar, d la St. 
Simeon Stylites, for the next forty years had not 
Maggie discovered her. If she had spent the 
time in meditation on her sins, the years would 
not have been barren of thought. 

Why typhoid did not stalk abroad was a never- 
ceasing wonder. 

But for the past few days all this was changed. 


SLEEPY HOLLOW^S EVENT. 


165 


The breakfast-table greeting now was, “Where 
did it freeze last night?” the after-breakfast 
occupation, going about with sauce-pans of hot 
coals to thaw out pipes. The men of the house- 
hold also had a change of business, in racing off, 
post-haste, for the plumber. Sometimes the in- 
habitants were wise enough to shut the water off; 
oftener they were not. None could say why ex- 
perience never seemed to teach anybody anything 
concerning the hollowness of water-pipes and the 
faith of man. Usually, a water-famine in one 
house or another would be the result of a freeze, 
owing to pipes bursting, or refusing to thaw in 
spite of hot coals and plumbers. The traditional 
“ heart of adamant ” as synonym of incapacity to 
melt was a weak metaphor compared with the 
water-pipes of Sleepy Hollow. The masculine 
element was here again brought into requisition 
in fetching pails of water from thawed-out neigh- 
bors for household necessities. 

The Wares had thawed and flooded and frozen 
and burst with the rest, — a little worse than the 
rest, if possible, — and, like the rest, talked of 
moving, not comprehending then the mystic spell 
that bound them to the place. Everybody re- 
tired to one room, poured all the strength of the 


166 


FORCED A CQ UAINTANCES. 


furnace therein, built a fire in the stove, and, feel- 
ing like Esquimaux in their hut, made up their 
minds not to venture into the hall till spring. 
Few families, even the most united, can bear such 
close and uninterrupted communion, and the 
builder of those houses had a great many family 
jars and sisterly contentions on his immortal soul. 
A large proportion of the latter were between 
Marion Ware and her sister Kitty ; for the pres- 
ent discomfort naturally suggested past comfort, 
which in turn paved the way to discussion as to 
whether they had burned cannel or Franklin 
coal in the sitting-room, and whether gas were 
not preferable to a student-lamp, and which way 
the head of the bed had stood in the nursery. 
However cuddling and dozing might suit Kitty, 
it chafed Marion’s active soul sorely. Even the 
blissful combination of literature and candy 
palled, as she exhausted the resources of book- 
club and home library, and read herself into a 
headache that not “Westward Ho” could make 
her forget. 

Kitty came up the steps, home from school, 
stopped a minute in the porch to stamp the snow 
from her feet, and presently entered the dining- 
room and came to the fire to thaw out. 


SLEEPY HOLLOW’S EVENT. 


167 


“Were you under the impression you were to 
take part in the tableaux ? ” she began at once, 
unwonted indignation in her tones. “ Because if 
you are, it’s one you’d better get rid of.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ They’re all made up, and we are left out.” 

“I don’t believe it; why, we were in two or 
three,” exclaimed Marion, tossing her book on to 
the table. It was a relief to have something more 
concrete than the weather to be angry with. 
“ Who told you ? ” 

“ Mrs. Drew, of course. She overtook me, and 
began to smile. Thereupon I buckled oh my 
shield and drew my sword. Literally, infused as 
much vacancy into my face as possible, and an- 
swered ‘ Ah ! ’ to most of her remarks, in a tone 
that matched my face. Sure enough, pretty soon 
she said, ‘ So sorry you and your sister aren’t to 
take part in the tableaux.’ It was the first inti- 
mation I had had that we were not. Credit is 
due me for not displaying the same. ‘ But Mrs. 
Eliot did not venture to ask you for fear you 
might be bored. We wished much to have Miss 
Marion, too, but did not suppose she would care 
to, as she considers tableaux only petrified theat- 
ricals that would do veiy well for those people to 


168 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


take part in whose sole qualification for the drama 
consisted in their proficiency in laying lily-white 
and rouge on.’ What did she mean ? ” 

Don’t know, I’m sure. Why, yes ; seems to 
me I did say something of the kind the other day. 
I wanted to have the fair wind up with a play, 
but Effie Faulkner thought theatricals wrong, or 
else, as a devoted High Churchwoman, she thinks 
the church should have the management of them ; 
and Mr. Dysart, though liberal enough, as he 
said, to allow of a curtain, drew the line at 
scenery. Such refinements of tweedledee and 
tweedledum are obscure to me.” 

“ I was inoffensive.” 

“I dare say you began it, on the contrary, by 
making those speeches the other night at the 
Duncans’. Mrs. Eliot is head and front of the 
affair, and Effie Faulkner is wrapped up in it,” 
which surmise hit the nail on the head ; the 
ladies mentioned had for once joined hands, and 
deemed it expedient to exclude the Wares from 
the projected entertainment. Without support 
Miss Faulkner would not have done it, for, 
though at heart both disliking and fearing 
Marion, she had her own reasons for wishing to 
keep on good terms with her. As for Mrs. Eliot, 


SLEEPY HOLLOW'S EVENT. 109 

though as a rule above small spite, she did not 
like to be laughed at any better than the rest of 
the world, and a lively account of the Literary 
Society’s first meeting had recently come to her 
ears, strengthening her recollection of that imper- 
tinent speech made her by Miss Kitty. 

“ Shall you go ? I wouldn’t. All your lovely 
pen and ink work, too. Take it back and don’t 
tend table. I’m glad I didn’t do anything.” 

“ I would net have them think that I cared. 
Nor do I, except for the slight. Yes, I shall tend 
my table, and they can have the easels and book- 
rack, but — ” the flash of Marion’s eyes finished 
the sentence in a way that boded ill for somebody. 

“I never did love Mrs. Eliot. I do not like 
the way she regards me. There is a look in her 
eye which says, ‘Ah, my young friend, how I 
should like to inscribe my theory of education 
upon the blank page of your mind.’ Thank 
Heaven I am not her daughter, or Vassar would 
be my fate,” and Kitty shook her head as though 
a worse one could not be conceived. That was 
the end of the slight for her. 

She was not prone to take offence, less from 
native goodness of disposition than because it 
was too much exertion. Not so Marion ; not that 


170 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

she, either, was given to harboring resentment, 
for, like other quick-tempered people, it was with 
her a flash and over. But in the present instance 
the late climatic changes, with their attendant re- 
sults, had their influence. Another reason was that 
the name of Effie Faulkner was at all times a red 
flag, she having taken one of her most violent dis- 
likes to her — she always either liked or disliked a 
person ; therein, of course, differing from her sis- 
ter, who, with one or two exceptions, notably Miss 
Hallock, looked upon mankind with the serenity 
of a philosopher, who rightly prizeth both the folly 
of setting his affections on creatures of clay, and 
of marring his serenity by uncomfortable passion. 

Marion’s resentment received fuel the next 
day on hearing that Miss Faulkner had planned 
several of the tableaux from the idyls that she 
herself had suggested. There are few things 
more trying than this business of having one’s 
thunder stolen — a petty larceny to which the 
young lady in question was prone, in the way of 
copying dresses and bonnets, peculiarly aggravat- 
ing to Marion, because she prided herself on 
having a style of her own. It was hard, unques- 
tionably, for a girl whose self-esteem did not 
outrun her deserts in considering herself “nice- 


SLEEPY HOLLOW’S EVENT. 171 

looking,” to be shown her own pretty winter suit 
burlesqued into just that objectionable shade of 
blue “every shop-girl was wearing,” and to be 
told it was being “kept to come out with at the 
fair,” when she and the offender were to stand 
side b}^ side. 

This fair, of which the tableaux were a part, 
was the one event of the year to Sleepy Hollow, 
whose interest and energy it had been absorbing 
for the past few weeks, from Mrs. Eliot, upon 
whose shoulders all secular affairs connected with 
the church rested, to Effie Faulkner, who had 
spent much time in the manufacture of embroid- 
ered aprons, tidies, and sundry other articles sup- 
posed to be high art, but whereof the art, was not 
so high as the price. Mrs. Eliot, though regard- 
ing Christianity as a creed outworn, felt it a 
social duty to attend church and give counte- 
nance and support to all matters connected there- 
with, for the benefit of the masses, to whom the 
guardianship of “ the big moral policeman ” was 
a necessity. 

The fair opened in the afternoon, though there 
were comparatively few people there till the even- 
ing, when the gentlemen appeared, and there was 
a band, and the villagers turned out in a body, 


172 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

and Sleepy Hollow awoke into something like 
excitement. Then, too, the great people on the 
Hill, at the foot of whose slopes, a mile away, the 
Hollow nestled, drove out with a troop of friends 
from their city homes ; for the little church was 
their prot^g4, and they took almost as much inter- 
est in its event as did the good village people, or 
the quiet aristocracy of Garrick Street. 

Even Mr. Duncan withdrew his attention from 
the Hindoo, and directed his afternoon constitu- 
tional toward the hall, where he stalked silently 
about, gazing up at the decorations as though 
they were constellations, and at the tables, with 
their array of tidies, aprons, pin-cushions, dolls, 
mounted calendars and thermometers, crewel 
embroideries, and crocheted shawls, and painted 
frames, and decorated china, with the very air 
they might have been regarded by the mummy, 
had he responded properly to the adjuration, — 

“ Speak, for thou long enough hast acted dummy.” 

Though the relic of ancient civilization might 
well have used his tongue in regretting the deca- 
dence of the arts since the good old times, he 
would have recognized one article as figuring in 
the fairs of his own era — a certain long red knit 


SLEEPY HOLLOW^ S EVENT. 


173 


article, of undiscovered genus, that Mrs. Drew 
had bestowed yearly, time out of mind, with the 
request that it would be returned if not sold. 

Mrs. Drew had decorated and arranged both 
the previous afternoon and that morning, with 
her usual activity, being one of those aggressively 
busy people who delight in being pressed and 
hurried. Mr. Dysart appeared early in the after- 
noon, and was one of the last to depart that even- 
ing. He evidently considered himself one of the 
attractions of the scene, and, when not jesting 
heavily with Marion at the fancy table, was mak- 
ing a triumphal progress through the hall, dis- 
pensing “ quips and cranks and wreathed smiles.” 
The quips and cranks were for any unfortunate 
that fell in his way ; the wreathed smiles thereat 
he had to himself. The Duncan boy did not 
appear till the evening, when he moved languidly 
about, now and then exchanging — if that can be 
said to be exchange where the value on one side 
so inestimably transcends that of the other — a 
few words with any married lady worthy his 
notice. 

Mrs. Eliot was in charge of the fancy table, and 
had invited the young ladies of her neighborhood 
to assist. Miss Faulkner was less disturbed by 


174 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the non-appearance of her youthful admirer on 
learning that Dr. Ware would be out in the 
evening. Also that Dr. Dering was expected. 
Marion had not herself invited the latter, but on 
the previous Sunday (that the young man should 
spend Sunday with them was now a usual occur- 
rence), the fair being spoken of, Arthur had pro- 
posed his friend’s coming. 

“ But he may not come. He does not care for 
ladies’ society, and rarely goes anywhere but to 
our house.” 

“ He doesn’t know many girls ? Is he coming 
out for the tableaux ? ” 

“ Arthur asked him, so I dare say he will, for 
friendship’s sake. Anything of that kind bores 
him half to death, as it does Arthur,” and Marion 
proceeded to tie up the broom-case she had just 
sold, in a very unscientific and wobbly bundle. 

The two girls had plenty of time for small pas- 
sages of arms during the afternoon, when the 
customers were mostly women and children from 
the village. Marion got home in time for tea, 
tired and rather cross. Arthur and Dr. Dering 
were already there, and the whole party took the 
car, already loaded with fair-bound citizens. 

The tableaux were much the usual list ; and, as 


SLEEPY HOLLOW'S EVENT. 


175 


usual, it was evident who were the prime movers 
therein, from the parts they presented. Rebecca , 
and Rowena, Miss Faulkner as Rowena; Pygma- 
lion and Galatea, Miss Faulkner again, looking 
so lovely in tulle draperies it was no wonder the 
sculptor fell in love with his creation, particularly 
as she had not yet destroyed the illusion by 
speech. Pygmalion had changed his nationality, 
and appeared in the guise of a J apanese ; the 
meeting between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of. 
Scots in the garden, in which the English sover- 
eign was apparently extending a cordial invitation 
to her injured Scottish sister : — 

“ O come and see me, Mary Ann, 

This afternoon at three.” 

Othello and Desdemona, the Duncan boy as a 
rather diminutive Moor. He had been a little 
too liberal with burnt cork, and was of so dark a 
hue that it was no wonder the Senate thought he 
must have used witchcraft to have induced any- 
body to fall in love with him, without taking into 
consideration that his Desdemona’s heart was 
big enough to contain all mankind, black or 
white, red or blue. Othello was attired in a 
pajamah, with a Roman sash about his manly 


176 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


waist, the costume of that day, as is well known. 
To wind up the entertainment was a series of 
scenes from Elaine, which elicited more applause 
than all the rest, particularly when Elaine, lean- 
ing dreamily back before her embroidery, with 
needle slackened in her hand, burst into a low 
song : — 

“ Sweet is true love, though given in vain, in vain. 

And sweet is death, who puts an end to pain. 

I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.” 

Everybody applauded. Dr. Dering, to whom 
song was a passion, manifested the first interest 
he had displayed that evening. The curtain fell 
on the last of the series, Elaine in the boat in 
“ rich attire,” pale yellow brocade draperies that 
none could recognize at that distance as Mrs. 
Eliot’s window-curtains. 

Marion slipped away to lay aside her things 
before taking her place at the table, and — after 
an interval of five minutes — Kitty followed. It 
was more than five minutes, however, before she 
reappeared. Her sister was already talking with 
a group of people, as she busily rolled up bundles 
and gave change. Dr. Dering, half a head above 
the group, was amiably willing to purchase but 
unable to choose, till his eye fell on the red 


SLEEPY EOLLOW^S EVENT, 


177 


muffatee, and, saying, in his grave, gentle way, 
that left one in dgoubt as to whether he were in 
jest or earnest, “ Maybe the Indians will like it,’* 
relieved the church of the burden it had borne so 
long. 

“They’re hunting around everywhere for the 
key to the dressing-room,” began Kitty. “It’s 
gone and the door’s locked, and Effie Faulkner 
can’t get her dress. She’s almost crazy. Every- 
body is out there on his knees.” 

“Praying for its recovery?” 

“ They can’t find it anywhere. She’s nothing 
but the yellow window-curtains to appear in.” 

“Can’t they break the door open? Couldn’t 
she go home ? How did it happen ? ” 

“They’ve tried and can’t. And she couldn’t 
get home and back again, for the cars only run 
once in two hours. She’s crying, and feels dread- 
fully.” 

“Don’t they know who did it?” 

“ Nobody has any idea. They’re afraid one of 
the village boys got in and took things, and then 
locked up so they shouldn’t find out.” 

“ What has she done ? ” 

It was one or another of the group who was 
questioning; Marion was still absorbed. Nor, 


178 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

after the first words, had Dr. Dering spoken, 
but he was neither absorbed in the bundle under 
his arm, nor in bestowing smiles and pleasant 
Words of greeting. 

He was looking straight at Marion. And the 
fact that blue glasses concealed his eyes, only in- 
tensified, as the shade had done before, what lay 
behind. It was so childish and silly. She would 
not yield to the feeling that she must look. 

“ Isn’t there anybody to force the lock ? ” some- 
body was asking. 

“I don’t know. ’They were all talking together. 
Nobody knew what to do. O, Mrs. Eliot ! what 
have they done — have they found it?” 

“ I sent for the locksmith, but he was away. 
We tried to break it open then, but could not, 
and Miss Faulkner has gone home.” 

There, she could not help it. Her unwilling 
eyes were caught, for just one fleeting second, by 
the blue glasses. Possibly it really was the clair- 
voyance of a doctor, who learns to read so much 
and so quickly by the very nature of his profes- 
sion. Perhaps it was only a rendering of the 
fairy-story, in which the child sees reflected in 
the face that peeped up at her from the brook — 
the expression frowning or smiling — that an- 


SLEEPY HOLLOW*S EVENT. I79 

swered to her own mood. But the look was — 
contempt. 

Neither Dr. Dering nor Dr. Ware remained 
long, neither being the kind of young man that 
frequents fairs, and Marion felt that she could 
enjoy herself at last. Did she? She laughed 
and talked brightly, and was another attraction 
of the pretty table. But her triumph might have 
been summed up in those hopeless words of 
“Vanity Fair”: “ Which of us have our wish in 
this world, or, having it, are satisfied ? ” 

There was no question, however, of Kitty’s en- 
joyment. Even she, in the excitement of trade, 
awoke into downright activity, counting change 
on her fingers under the table with surprising 
celerity, only marvelling that it came out a differ- 
ent sum every time. She also sold Mrs. Eliot’s 
rigolette, and, as the customer could not be found, 
that lady found herself the donor of a quite 
involuntary contribution. 

The locksmith did not arrive till the hall was 
thinning. A few valuables left in the dressing- 
room were found unmolested. The key never 
turned up, and, after some talk, the question of its 
disappearance was dropped as un solvable. 

Nobody knew. Only a pair of blue glasses. 


CHAPTER IX. 

A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 

Marion was thinking and gloomily contem- 
plating her boots, which were the subject of her 
thoughts. They were of French kid, that had 
once been soft and fine, but which now, thanks to 
time and the innumerable applications of the 
preparation warranted to improve the choicest 
leather, was covered with a “ crackle ” that, how- 
ever admirable in china and roast pig, no lady 
desires on her boots. Then there was something 
odd the matter with one sole, that made the for- 
ward portion of it go flip-flap, in a manner equally 
irritating to the nerves and to the mind that 
did not know where the next pair was com- 
ing from. 

That was the trouble. Mrs. Ware was unable 
to spare any money till the next quarter, for 
there had been extra expenses, and insurance, and 
the flour-barrel — that always give out together — 
180 


A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 


181 


must be renewed, though boots and gloves were 
not. And then, thanks to the furnace, they were 
always out of coal. In fact, it seldom happened 
that the coal-cart was not visible on Garrick Street, 
owing both to the before-mentioned construction 
of its furnaces and the inability of its purse to 
order more than a pint at a time. 

Gloves were not of such pressing importance, 
for, though Marion’s only pair had undergone 
divers scrubbings, and had been mended times 
without number, they were not yet absolutely 
past wear, for, mercifully, it was still winter, 
when one’s hands are concealed by a muff. But 
it was not pleasant to be always obliged to wear 
rubbers, however bright and dry the day. 

If there were only some way to get a little 
money ! But there was not a scrap in the rag- 
bag — the only source of income the Misses Ware 
had. Arthur would gladly give her the requisite 
sum did she but hint to him her need, and go 
without new boots or gloves himself; but that 
was not to be thought of. Kitty would have 
asked him without hesitation, in the negative 
selfishness that looks only at the object wanted. 

Besides, it was not of a temporary expedient 
she was thinking. There was so little that a girl 


182 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


could do, unless especially gifted, and even then 
it took years to gain a foothold. As Arthur had 
once said, teaching and writing were all that were 
open to her. In a general way, marriage was an- 
other means of support, but that, in this case, was 
out of the question. If Marion had looked at the 
world from behind a veil and bars, she could not 
have considered herself more hopelessly doomed 
to a life of celibacy. Once, not long before, — for 
this was not the first time she had reflected on 
the feasibility of earning money, — she had ob- 
tained a set of the examination papers given out 
to the candidates for positions in the public 
schools. Secretly, so that if she failed no one 
should know it. She laid the first paper down 
with a sinking heart, and, by the time the last 
was reached, — she had even had to look up its 
title, “Didactics,” in the dictionary, — she ac- 
knowledged that it was useless to try in that 
direction. 

There was one line left — writing. Why could 
she not do that? It seemed easy enough, re- 
quired no outlay, and she was convinced she 
could write far better stories, both as to style and 
plot, than many she had read, even in magazines 
of high standing. She took up the just finished 


A bi:ggab ojv' hobsbback, 183 

essay, and reread it. As a matter of course, hav- 
ing given in at the beginning, it had come to be a 
settled thing that Kitty should merely mention 
the subject of her composition, to have her sister 
write it for her. It was about these very essays 
that a certain nebulous idea had revolved and 
found consistency and gathered form. 

It was a pity her talent could not be turned to 
better use than in forging compositions. Writing 
was so well paid, too. Had not somebody told 
her that the Messrs. Harper paid at the rate of a 
dollar a hundred words, and somebody else that 
Miss Alcott received a hundred dollars for a sin- 
gle short story ? That Harper & Bros, would 
eagerly grasp at the proffered MS., that she and 
Miss Alcott were on the same level, were matters 
of fact. A story of ordinary length, then, ought 
to bring her fifty dollars. Very likely they would 
ask her to write again. There is something of 
the delirium of hasheesh about such reveries. 
Marion, though not given to day-dreams, fell 
straightway into one, in which she received a let- 
ter from the famous firm, reading : 

“Dear Madam, — We are greatly pleased 
with your story, and enclose herewith a check for 


184 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

fifty dollars. Hoping you will become a frequent 
contributor to our columns, we are, 

“ Very respectfully, 

“ Harper & Bros.” 

This encouragement leading to other and yet 
better stories, Marion Ware was speedily a house- 
hold name. A serial would be the next step, 
whose monthly appearance should be breathlessly 
awaited, and followed by respectful criticisms in 
all the leading journals. How pleasant it would 
be to take up the paper, and, turning to the re- 
view column, or “ Personals,” read : — 

“ Miss Ware, the clever young authoress, is 
described as tall and slender, with dark hair and 
bright gray eyes. Though not pretty, she is 
eminently nice-looking. Her success is unpre- 
cedented.” Or, 

“We hear that Miss Marion Ware, the well 
known writer, is but seventeen. It seems hardly 
credible, judging from the maturity of her style 
and felicity of diction. But genius is ever 
young.” 

She was picturing herself at the Atlantic 
Breakfast, the central figure, as the gifted young 
writer whose recent book had made the greatest 


A BBGGAB ON HOBSEBACK, 185 

stir since “Jane Eyre.” Arthur should go 
abroad, just as they had happily planned, and, 
coining home, they would be rich and famous to- 
gether ; and she would keep house for him, and 
be one of the head centres of society, in a man- 
sion where the coal was not forever giving out, 
and a brook everlastingly coming in ; and he 
should not pinch himself and never say a word 
about it, and mother should not worry and look 
care-worn, and it should no longer be a grim spec- 
ulation as to how long carpets were likely to last, 
and a matter of indifference when the sugar-tin 
and coffee-bucket waxed low. Besides, nobody 
ever thought of Charlotte Bronte, or Hannah 
More, or Harriet Martineau as an old maid — 
with which jumble of unselfishness and tender 
thought for others, sordid need, incipient ambi- 
tion, and sheer nonsense, Marion aroused herself 
from her dreams. 

But the purpose remained. Having conceived 
the idea, it was like her to throw herself heart 
and soul into it. The rest of that day she was 
absorbed in the most delicious phase of story- 
writing — the becoming acquainted with, and 
developing, one’s own ideas. The plot began 
gayly, waxed exciting, and ended in midnight 


186 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

gloom. The characters were all of exalted sta- 
tion, the good “ virtuous to the verge of eccen- 
tricity,” and the bad, lurid examples of the depth 
to which human nature can descend. Its field of 
action, in accordance with another rule of young 
authorship, was laid abroad, amidst people and 
scenes of which the writer knew nothing, and 
depicting emotions and experiences she had never 
herself lived. 

Early the next morning, Kitty being happily 
out of the way, having thought out the outlines 
of the tale, the exact words with which it ended, 
and two beautiful thoughts, she shut herself into 
her room with a pile of old envelopes, half-sheets 
of letters, and other odd scraps, and fell to work. 

There were one or two difficulties to start with : 
one was names, and it was not till she had gone 
from A to Z in the dictionary, and consulted an 
old Court Journal, that she could find just those 
that fitted the characters; they were very fine 
names, of course. Also there seemed a singular 
abruptness when change of scene or lapse of 
time was to be expressed. The reader was jerked 
from America to the heart of Africa, and back to 
New York via India in a manner calculated to 
rob him of the little breath he had left after 


A b:eggab on hobseback. 187 

perusing the varied catastrophes ; and whatever 
else might have been brought against it, the story 
could not be said to drag, for time flew after the 
manner — jerky and visible — of the theatre clock, 
that moves its figures once in five minutes at a 
jump. But pausing only now and then over time 
and space, which, if unthinkable, seemed to the 
authoress much more unwritable, her pen flew 
with a celerity that might have made Dumas 
himself envious. This naturally confirmed her in 
the belief in her own literary talent, taking 
neither of two things into consideration. That 
having carried the main idea of the story in her 
head for so long, much of this ease and rapidity 
was due to unconcsious mental action. Nor did 
it occur to her that the very facility with which 
she was gifted would be a drawback in the path 
she had chosen, an ever-present temptation to 
write with all speed, to the injury or utter ignor- 
ing of that “time-quality,” which is so essential 
to success. 

The whole story was finished by dark, and the 
next day was spent in copying it on post-office 
paper, discovered amongst some of Arthur’s prop- 
erty. It was glaring orange in color, and must 
have imperilled the eyesight of any editor rash 


188 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


enough to read it. Marion sighed as she counted 
the pages, and thought of the number of stamps 
it would require to send that bulky package ; 
double postage, too, though of course there could 
be no doubt as to its being accepted. 

Then came a difficulty — the address. To give 
her own, and expose herself to the remote contin- 
gency of the ridicule that would await failure, 
was not to be thought of. Besides, for a young 
writer to conceal her first effort is as much in- 
stinct as it is in a squirrel to hide nuts. After 
much anxious thought, she gave the address of 
the village and the name Delilah Sullivan. 
When she inquired at the office, the postmistress 
was expected to think it was for her cook, while 
Delilah was a sufficiently uncommon name to 
keep her correspondence from getting mixed up 
with that of any other cook’s. She then directed 
it with characteristic confidence to the first maga- 
zine in the country, and walked that afternoon to 
the village that she might mail it with her own 
hands. 

Long, long afterward, she smiled at these early 
aspirations and the unbounded faith in her own 
powers — faith that diminished with every suc- 
cessive effort. Not from faint-heartedness, but 


A BEGGAH ON HOBSEBACK. 189 

from the humility of earnest purpose ; a humility 
so deep and true that it could not fail to leaven 
the whole character — the accomplishment that 
never comes up to the ideal, the miserable, hope- 
less sense of failure at the completion of every 
effort, and the pouring out of one’s best thought 
apparently in vain. And what was then the spur 
and chief spring — though not, unconsciously to 
her, the only one in the curious complexity of 
human action, the pressing need of money — grew 
afterward to be one of her sorest doubts. For 
how could that be a genuine “ call ” that had its 
origin not in the Must that is a definition of 
genius, but in boots? 

One week, two, passed, and brought no missive 
to reward her daily walk. She grew a little dis- 
heartened with the hope deferred, of whose inner- 
most meaning only a young writer knows. And 
at the end the hope is so often met by the disap- 
pointment that can be compared to nothing else. 

It was not till the end of the third week that 
an ominously big missive was handed her, with 
some printing in the upper left-hand corner, and 
a great many stamps in the right. Her heart 
sank as she took it, and wishing the firm would 
not put its name so conspicuously on the enve- 


190 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

lope to betray her secret to the postmistress, who 
was regarding her with smiling pity, Marion hur- 
ried out of the office, displaying an extraordinary 
amount of agitation ever her cook’s correspon- 
dence. As soon as she was out of sight of the 
postmistress, who was of course watching her 
from the window, she tore open the envelope and 
took out the familiar orange MS. 

Accompanying it was a polite little printed 
note, expressing such fervent gratitude for having 
been allowed to read her story, and such poignant 
regret at being obliged — from reasons quite 
apart from its undoubted merits — to decline it, 
that the authoress felt her obliged and obedient 
servants were mocking her. That the note was 
printed made matters worse. It was so unfeeling. 

Poor Marion ! Shp had hardly realized till then 
how confidently she had counted on this first 
attempt being accepted, and just in proportion to 
the height of her hopes was the depth of her dis- 
appointment. She tore the envelope and note 
into tiny bits, and scattered them into the river, 
with a bitter little smile at the thought of the 
fifty dollars, and returned home with an odd, 
empty feeling where the hope had lain so long. 
Ridiculous, of course ; but pitiful, too. 


A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 101 

For three days the MS. reposed under the 
bureau, safe from her sister’s inquiring eyes. 
Then, one afternoon, the sharpness of the wound 
having worn off a little, she poked it out with the 
yardstick, read it over, was struck afresh with 
its transcendent merits, and determined on a new 
line of action. Waiting till the next stormy day, 
she set out for town with the precious MS. in her 
pocket, a list of half a dozen papers in her purse, 
and the determination in her heart to try every 
one of them in turn, vaguely hoping the charm of 
her presence might soften the obdurate editorial 
heart. 

Paper number one had for its editor the well 
known author of some popular books of wild 
adventure and hairbreadth escapes. He had 
himself figured as the hero of most of them, if 
his own word was to be believed, and Marion 
felt some little curiosity to see him. He had 
guarded his approach as by a labyrinth of old. 
A by-street led off the main one, a lane off the 
by-street ; there, after asking one of a group of 
expressmen congregated on the sidewalk for the 
desired information, and bringing down upon her 
thereby, to her dismay, the whole group, she 
found the way to a dark and dismal doorway. 


192 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

Beginning at the entrance, dirty little index 
hands informed that the editor’s office was up 
five flights ; along the whole crooked ascent, that 
now and then plunged off into a narrow entry, 
did the ghostly hand still beckon. The last of 
these passages was at the top of the building and 
brought her to a door on which was painted the 
name of the paper. Without giving herself time 
for thought, she plunged in. 

It was a small room, well filled by a big desk, 
and a big man with a shiny, bald head. If he 
were indeed the hero of his own romances, he 
must have changed amazingly since the days of 
his youth. He was tearing envelopes open, glanc- 
ing at their contents, and throwing them into a 
waste-basket. The young lady stood by the 
threshold in silence, inspecting him. 

“Won’t you sit down? ” asked the editor, with 
rather empty politeness, seeing there was nothing 
at hand for his visitor to be seated in but the 
waste-basket. 

“N — n — no, thank you,” horrified at finding 
her powers of speech had deserted her, partly 
from having run up the five flights at full speed, 
more from finding herself in the editor’s presence. 
“ I came to see you ; — that is — I thought — per- 


A BEGGAB ON HOBSEBACK. 193 

haps — you published stories — ” The impulse 
was strong upon her to turn and run down the 
five flights at yet greater speed. 

“ That depends,” answered the editor, tossing a 
paper into the already crowded basket with an 
air that made Marion certain it was from some 
fellow-aspirant. He did not pay much attention 
to her, or seem surprised at her surprising con- 
duct. Possibly it was not the first visitor of the 
kind he had had. 

“ Depends on what ? ” 

“ On whom the writer is.” 

“I have a story I should like to have pub- 
lished. Will you — will you look at it?” She 
drew it half out of her pocket as she spoke, to 
drop it in again at the answer. 

“It’s simply a business arrangement. I take 
what will pay me. It’s the name that pays, not 
the quality of the work. The public will read 
any trash if there is a popular name attached. I 
would give any sum Longfellow, for instance, 
chose to ask for a piece of work, while if an un- 
known writer should send me a poem of transcen- 
dent genius, I should decline. It is hardly worth 
while to read your story. I have considerable on 
hand as it is.” 


194 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


Crushing, at the very outset, to meet this frank 
exposition of editorial views. Small and ashamed, 
Marion walked slowly out of the labyrinth, feel- 
ing that in truth she had had an interview with 
the Minotaur. Taking a melancholy pleasure in 
splashing through the biggest puddles, she wended 
her way to office number two, thanking her stars 
that the editor of this paper was not a hero of 
romance. There were other contrasts, for the 
building was bright and new, and an elevator took 
her to the top of it, instead of her weary legs. 
Perhaps these outward influences cheered her 
unconsciously, for her courage had returned by 
the time she reached the office door, and paused, 
warned by experience, to compose a formula that 
would answer for all the papers alike. 

“ Do you take stories from any but your regu- 
lar contributors?” would be short and to the 
purpose, besides betraying nothing of her inex- 
perience. Thus Marion, little knowing that the 
unknown writer is easily detected by the prac- 
tised editorial eye. So with more confidence she 
knocked and took a seat by the fire, as invited by 
a quiet-voiced, pleasant-mannered man, who po- 
litely rose from his desk at her entrance. It was 
not so bad after all. Probably that first hateful 


A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 


195 


fat man was an exception to the race of editors. 
Life in the wilds had made him unfit for civiliza- 
tion ; those virtues that had made him the darling 
of the damsels of the other world had not borne 
transplanting. 

“ Yes, we take them, if the story itself warrants 
it. We do not pay, though,” mentioning this as 
an after-thought of minor importance. 

“ I wanted — I expected pay. Do you never 
make exceptions, if, as you say, the story war- 
rants it? ” 

“We could not do that. We used to pay, and 
pay well, and the result was we were flooded with 
contributions, some of them very good. I was 
constantly surprised to find how many there were, 
mainly women, who, without practice, could write 
so well, though few rose above the general level. 
Our paper is devoted, you know, to agriculture, 
and in sheer self-defence we had to adopt the rule 
of laying out no money on the literary depart- 
ment. We copy, or take stories from those who 
write simply for the pleasure of seeing their work 
in print. We are always overstocked from that 
source. Still, if you would like to leave your 
story, and on that understanding, we will read it. 
But I may not be able to get at it for some time. 


196 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Last year we had three thousand stories sent us. 
We have space for one a week.” 

Crushing again. It was worse than the first 
interview, for then vexation had borne her up. 
Marion swallowed something as she rose to go. 
One chance in three thousand, then, expressed it 
mathematically. And no pay at that. 

“ Don’t go. If you will allow me, I should like 
to look at your story. It is your first attempt, 
may I ask ? I thought so. Now, shall I give you 
a little advice ? If you are trying your hand at 
writing for the mere pleasure of the thing, well 
and good. If — ” he looked at her keenly; there 
was nothing in her appearance to suggest poverty, 
but here, as with the first editor, the case was un- 
doubtedly not the first of the kind that had come 
to him, — “if it is with the thought of earning a 
decent income, any income, give it up at once. It 
can’t be done. If you resolve to keep on, not- 
withstanding, there are one or two points it is 
well to bear in mind. Write legibly. An editor 
would not care if George Eliot should scrawl in 
pale ink on thin blue paper ; he would throw the 
same from an unknown writer, unread, into the 
waste-basket. Don’t expect pay. If you get it 
after three years’ practice, think yourself for- 


A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. I97 

tunate. In general, what an editor wants in a 
contributor is snap and a power of condensation, 
a head full of varied information, and an odd way 
of putting things. Your story is about three 
times too long. Good-morning,” and Marion re- 
peated it gratefully. 

Editor number three likewise abode under the 
sky-light; and the climb and the formula were 
rewarded only by the information that he was 
out, given by a red-haired boy with a cold in his 
head, — a statement Marion utterly disbelieved, 
in view of the hour and the sound of voices issu- 
ing from a side room. Office four was in another 
region ; the magazine was one of those recom- 
mended by Kean Street and was of the domestic, 
premium-giving description, that no household 
should be without, — that is to say, the household 
furnished in haircloth and “ God Bless Our 
Home.” Marion inquired if the magnate were 
within who delivered his monthly ukases on art, 
fashions, morals, politics, fancy-work, and eti- 
quette, who held “ The Ladies’ Work-basket,” 
“ Higher Thoughts for Monthly Reading,” and 
“ Our Own Cook Book ” at one and the same 
time in his mighty brain ; and was informed by 
the small man, with the alarmingly wide smile, 


198 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


who had opened the door, that he was that mul~ 
turn in parvo. He did take stories, expressed a 
willingness to look at the young lady’s, spread it 
out on the desk, and, with another appalling grin, 
said : — 

“ Can’t read a word of it, ma’am.” 

At this insult to her best angular handwriting, 
Marion reclaimed the MS. with dignity, and 
marched off to office number five. By this time, 
she was actuated only by a dogged determination 
to get to the end of her list, and by the opposi- 
tion that always gave added strength to her re- 
solves. As to the pecuniary part, that was nearly 
forgotten ; though, with a theory more credible to 
ambition than common-sense, she considered that, 
if her work were worth being published at all, it 
was worth being paid for. The fifth paper was a 
religious weekly. The editor was writing with a 
scratchy pen, and, without looking up, responded 
promptly to the parrot-like words : — 

“We do not. W e shall not buy any for a year. 
We have a desk, a table, and a safe full now.” 

Apparently he had adopted a formula too. 

There was but one place left, happily. Wet, 
weary, and heart-sick, Marion splashed her way 
along, cleaving to her MS. with the dogged per- 


A BI^GGAB ON HORSEBACK. 199 

sistency of the youth in Excelsior to his banner, 
and with about as much idea of what she was 
going to accomplish as that resolute if insensate 
climber when he got to the top of the Alp. She 
wondered a little as to the reason why all editors 
should place themselves in the roof. An un- 
happy suspicion crossed her mind that it was to 
get out of the way of would-be contributors. 
There was a barrel filled with scraps of paper she 
noticed as she went along. When she came out, 
she would poke her MS. down into its depths, 
and with it bury all thoughts of fame and fortune. 

This office was covered round about with pic- 
tures from illustrated papers; the one behind 
the editor’s chair was of a man in trapper’s cos- 
tume, flinging an Indian head-first off a precipice. 
She was wondering about that story all the time 
the editor was talking and she giving him the 
closest attention. He was a small old man, with 
a white beard and gentle voice. It was another 
surprise, for he, too, was author and hero of wild 
and stirring tales of the western plains, of bucca- 
neering and mining adventures, of battle, murder, 
and sudden death. Marion was sure he would 
not have harmed a fly. 

“We do take them,” he was saying, in a doubt- 


200 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

ful tone. “And pay? Yes, we pay for the one 
on the first page. The rest we copy or fill up 
with contributions from writers who simply wish 
to see their work in print. Look here,” opening 
first one drawer and then another of his table, 
and nodding toward a safe, “ these are filled with 
such. I don’t get time to read half.” 

“ Would it be any use to leave mine ? ” 

“ Let me see it.” Then, rapidly scanning the 
pages, and giving a nod of satisfaction at their 
business-like appearance, “It would do for the 
first page. You can leave it if you like, but it is 
doubtful if I make use of it. If you will give me 
your address, I will send you a copy of the paper 
in case I find it available.” 

. “ And — and the pay ? ” ventured Marion, fear- 
ing her mind must be a hopelessly sordid one, all 
these representatives of Literature seeming so 
magnificently above pecuniary questions. She 
did not like to insist on this point too strenu- 
ously, for fear the editor might change his mind 
and hand back the MS. 

“We give five dollars.” 

It hardly paid for the mere manual labor ; but 
just then she would gladly have disposed of her 
production for five cents. Giving the name and 


A BEGGAB ON HORSEBACK. 201 

address as before, she left the office and hurried 
off, still actuated by a fear that a voice might call 
after her, and her Old Man of the Sea be again 
fastened on her. In the editor’s desk or the edi- 
tor’s barrel was of but little moment to her then. 
She felt like the Wandering Jew in Dora’s picture 
when he is at last at liberty to sit down and take 
off his shoes. 

If Marion’s obstinacy, her headstrong insistence 
on her own way, brought her often into difficul- 
ties, it had its reverse side, too. There was a 
sentence in a recent Atlantic., in the “ Contribu- 
tors’ Club,” that haunted her — “The way is long 
and hard, but it leads to sunny fields and pastures 
green.” The article was speaking of literature 
as a profession. Though she was just beginning 
to faintly realize its difficulty, it was like her 
hopeful, confident nature to dwell more on those 
pleasant fields than on the long, hard road that 
led to them. 

Day after day, having allowed what she consid- 
ered due time to elapse, did she present herself at 
the office with the one query. Day after day did 
she receive the same shake of the head in answer. 
It was one Friday that she was rewarded at last. 
Instead of the usual response, there was handed 


202 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


her something. Two somethings. It was the 
letter that was thrust unheeded into her pocket, 
the paper that was torn eagerly open as she hur- 
ried to the bridge. Her own name was sought 
for with beating heart. 

There it was. On the first page, “ Saved from 
Charybdis,” by Marion Ware. There may be 
sweeter moments in life than that of seeing one’s 
own first production in print ; but no young 
writer will believe it. 

Of course Mrs. Ware was surprised, and de- 
lighted, and proud, and of course Marion read the 
story aloud then and there. And having finished 
it to her family — she had read it herself on the 
way home — she perused it for the third time, 
with a happy smile on her face and golden dreams 
again in her heart. 

“ I want to show it to Arthur. I knew I could 
write if I set about it. It only needs a little per- 
severance, that’s all. Only,” regretfully, “ I had 
two lovely Thoughts ; and one the editor has cut 
out entirely, and the other the compositor has 
made such nonsense of I don’t know myself what 
I meant.” 

“ It’s very good ; only I wish you’d have let 
them marry all round and be happy. Seems to 


A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 


203 


me you might have left one person alive, instead 
of a general massacre. What did you get for 
it ? ” asked Kitty. 

“I haven’t opened the letter yet,” replied 
Marion, drawing it from her pocket. “ The man 
said five dollars. Yes! ‘Pay to Marion Ware.’ 
The first money I’ve ever earned I How nice it 
is I ” spreading the check out on her knee, and 
reading the delightful words again. “It’s come 
at just the right time, too, for the sole of my boot 
is off, my rubbers are as good as gone, my gloves 
can’t be mended again, and next week is Arthur’s 
play; and however could I have held up my 
glasses without new ones I ” 

“ It’s a good time to buy boots now,” said Mrs. 
Ware, “at the shop-worn sales. If you go 
directly, you will have a good choice.” 

^ “ Yes ; and they’re selling off the loveliest six- 
buttoned kids for seventy-five cents, too. I shall 
go in town to-morrow, bright and early.” 

“ Get the gloves by all means, for you certainly 
need them ; but don’t buy cheap ones. They 
never pay,” said Mrs. Ware, with her long shop- 
ping experience. 

“ They don’t pay, I know, mother, unless one 
understands how to buy,” returned Marion, confi- 


204 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

dently. “ But I mean to get in town before these 
gloves have been picked over, and shall examine 
them very carefully.” 

“ Be satisfied with fewer buttons and better kid. 
They will have to last you some time, and you 
must use discretion.” 

“I can’t do with fewer than six buttons. 
Annie Meredith never wears less,” returned 
Marion, in the decided way that made her 
mother, like a wise woman, say no more. 

Bright and early was it the next morning when 
she started off, the precious check tucked into her 
purse, her rubbers and shabby gloves on for the 
last time. It was not till the others were at tea 
that she returned. 

“ Mother ! ” 

“ Here, dear, in the dining-room.” 

She entered, smiling and with an air of tri- 
umph, sat down without taking off her things, 
and drew two bundles from her pocket. One she 
unrolled and handed to her mother. 

“There! aren’t they lovely? Just as nice as 
though I had paid three times the sum. There’s 
nothing like being on hand and understanding 
how to buy. Pretty color, aren’t they ? ” 

“Very,” and Mrs. Ware refrained from saying 


A B^GGAB ON HORSEBACK. 


205 


what her experienced eye and hand told her — 
that the kid was thick and pebbly, and that day- 
light would show more clearly what already she 
could discern as discolored splashes. “ Take off 
your things, dear, and have some hot tea. You 
must be chilly,” ringing for fresh toast. “Did 
you have the boots sent ? I hope you got good 
thick ones.” 

“The fact is,” began Marion, taking up the 
other bundle, a long, slender one, “ I did not buy 
boots, after all.” 

“ Why, Marion, were they gone already ? ’ ' 

“ That’s what you’ve been working for ! And 
you ripped the other sole off to match this morn- 
ing.” 

“I thought,” continued the authoress, compo- 
sedly, slashing at the string with a table-knife in 
a way that would have grieved Miss Edgeworth 
to the heart, “ that I could get along a while 
longer. Annie Meredith was showing me one of 
these, and almost the first thing I saw down town 
was one like it, only prettier. She paid five 
dollars for hers, too, and this was only four. 
There ! ” and she held up an oxidized silver 
dagger for the hair. “ Isn’t it pretty ? ” She 
contemplated it with much complacency. 


206 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


The tea-pot remained suspended in Mrs. Ware’s 
hand. Astonishment had bereft her of powers of 
speech. But Kitty voiced the amazement of both. 

“But you never wear anything in your hair! 
You hate ornaments and jewelry any way ! You 
hate oxidized silver, and bangles, and rhinestones 
above all else ! Sudden wealth has turned your 
brain. Stark, staring mad ! I wonder if this is 
the way all authoresses go shopping ? How 
funny, oh, how funny, George Eliot must be ! ” 


CHAPTER X. 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 

A DRAMATIC club, of which Arthur was a 
member, was to give its annual performance for 
the benefit of a charity in which a good many 
prominent people were interested. The young 
men belonging to the club were well known, so 
that the expected performance had made a good 
deal of talk amongst the young people. Both 
Marion and Kitty had been looking forward to it. 

Kitty was to meet her mother and sister after 
school, at an appointed place. They were 
promptly on hand, Marion rejoicing in the new 
gloves that had come so opportunely, and trying 
not to mind the discomfort of damp feet, for the 
rubbers had gone the way of the soles, and the 
frost of Garrick Street had succumbed to a mild 
day. They waited till after the appointed time, 
but no Kitty. 

“Serves her right,” scolded Marion, as they 
207 


208 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

walked along. “ Of course she wouldn’t be 
there. She’ll walk in about five minutes late, as 
unconcerned as you please.” 

Which was precisely what happened. Kitty, 
arriving late, asked the girl at the counter if a 
lady in black and a young lady in blue had been 
in, and if they had left anything for her, knowing 
all the time why they were not there, and that 
the one complimentary ticket admitted three. 
But, for all that, the answer added to her disap- 
pointment and vexation. There was nothing to 
do but take the train home, with a regret that was 
not the first, by a long list, caused by that same 
failing of hers. 

Meanwhile, Marion was enjoying herself im- 
mensely ; for the pretty hall was crowded, there 
were ever so many people there whom she knew, 
and the play was charming, the young actors tak- 
ing their parts with such hearty good-will, and 
such evident enjoyment of their rfiles, that no one 
had the heart to smile at such small incongruities 
as the heroine catching a bouquet “ on the fly,” 
with an expertness that brought down the house 
and suggested a wide experience at tennis ; or at 
a sedate matron getting across the stage in three 
strides. The club consisted only of masculine 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 209 

members, and the play they had chosen was 
“ School.” 

As the curtain fell on the last act but one, — in 
which Ned Keith was making love with as much 
ardor as though he were off the stage, — Marion, 
in making a quick movement, broke one of the 
sticks of her fan. It was not her own, and that 
was the chief cause of her trouble. It was a 
pretty carved ivory one of Kitty’s, that she had 
slipped into her pocket, intending to explain 
when they were in the hall. Her own did not 
go well with her dress, but, knowing that her sis- 
ter would be likely to refuse to lend one of her 
most cherished possessions, she had made no men- 
tion of it beforehand. The reflection that if 
Kitty were not at the performance all trouble 
would be avoided, the fan replaced, and its owner 
never be the wiser, may have had its own small 
share in her disagreeable reply to Mrs. Ware, 
when the latter would have given a few minutes 
more grace. 

“I sha’n’t go at all if we have to go in late. 
I wouldn’t give a cent for a play if I’m not in 
time to see the curtain rise. It’s Kitty’s own 
fault, and I ought not to suffer for it.” Which 
nobody could gainsay, and her mother, though 


210 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


she would have sacrificed her own pleasure with- 
out a thought, felt the injustice of destroying 
Marion’s. 

To make matters worse, it was the outside 
stick, that could not be mended without the re- 
pair showing. She might take it to the jeweller’s, 
after the play, and see ; but then she did not want 
her mother to know, either. As she was thus 
lamenting and considering, she suddenly discov- 
ered that one of her new gloves was split all 
across the palm. The fan was slipped into 
her pocket and momentarily forgotten in this 
fresh calamity. The last act passed almost un- 
heeded. 

When they reached home,’ Kitty was found in 
an unusually subdued mood, asking no questions 
about the afternoon, and displaying no interest 
when Marion began telling about it. Her whole 
bearing was that of a wantonly injured person, 
who yet forbears to retaliate by word or deed. 
She made no allusion to the broken engagement 
till her mother questioned her. She did not 
know why she was late, but it seemed as though 
they might have waited — this with eyes fixed on 
her sister. 

“ The girl said you had not been gone more 


WHERE SHE RODE TO, 211 

than five minutes. What difference could five 
minutes make ? ” 

“It’s made the difference to you of having a 
whole afternoon’s fun to regret,” retorted Marion. 

“And it might some day make the difference 
of having something to regret a whole life-time,” 
added her mother, gravely. “ It was too bad that 
you lost the pleasure, Kitty. I was sorry, but we 
could not wait. There was plenty of time for 
you to be in season.” 

“It wasn’t my fault. It was the car — or, 
maybe it was the chemistry, — ” began Kitty, 
vaguely, when she caught sight of the glove 
Marion had thrown on the side table. They were 
now at tea. “ Torn your glove, have you — split 
it the entire length, O yes ! ” She reached out 
for it, thrust her fingers through the rent and 
waggled them provokingly. “Your lovely new 
ones.” 

“ You can wake up enough to be disagreeable, 
can’t you?” 

“ Told you so ; we both told you so. The idea 
of expecting to get six-buttoned gloves for sev- 
enty-five cents,” pursued Kitty, with increasing 
liveliness. “ Why didn’t you ask them to give 
them to you ? Showed a good deal of discrimina- 


212 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


tion in your purchases I must say. I wish I 
could write.” She wound up with a laugh that 
was even more hateful than her words. 

“I’m delighted that you lost the play!” ex- 
claimed Marion, angrily ; but Kitty continued, in 
her aggravating, smooth tones : — 

“ You’d better get up bright and early again 
to-morrow morning, and see if you can’t find a few 
more bargains. There’s nothings like being on 
hand and knowing how to buy. It wasn’t your 
fault — O no, it never is. Lucky you aren’t a 
Catholic. You wouldn’t make a good one, be- 
cause you’d think yourself more infallible than 
the pope.” 

“ Kitty, be quiet I I will not have this wrang- 
ling. Yop are the one in fault ; I would not have 
Marion’s pleasure spoilt by a concession to your 
heedlessness.” Mrs. Ware spoke with a sternness 
foreign to her. 

“Five dollars gone. Profitably spent, I must 
say. What a thing it is to be a genius I ” 

“ Leave the room, Kitty ! ” 

Her mother seldom spoke in that tone, but 
when she did even Marion obeyed without ques- 
tion, as now did Kitty, who, like most sensitive 
people, always yielded readily to authority. She 


WBEEE SHE RODE TO. 


213 


pushed her chair back, with a look of as intense 
dislike on her face as it was possible for her to 
assume, returned by one of equal animosity, min- 
gled with triumphant virtue, from her sister. Yet, 
throughout the quarrel, her tones had been even 
and smooth, and there had been no appearance of 
excitement. She left the room, likewise, with her 
accustomed deliberation, and ascended the stairs 
as slowly as u^al. 

But two minutes later she ran down them 
again and into the dining-room with a celerity 
Marion herself could not have surpassed. In her 
hand was the pretty ivory fan with the ugly 
break across its delicate carving. Marion had 
laid it on her bureau on her return, intending to 
put it carefully away after tea. Kitty never went 
upstairs alone after dark. When it had been 
mended by the best jeweller in town, she could 
confess with better grace. 

“ Did you do that ? ” She had laid it on the 
table and was looking at her sister. Not with 
dislike now, but with an intensity, a concentra- 
tion, and quietness that embarrassed Marion in 
spite of herself. She had intended to say how 
sorry she was, at that other more favorable time. 
But now, with the sharp words fresh in her mind, 


214 


FOECED ACQUAINTANCES. 


there was added a guilty embarrassment before 
Kitty’s look, against which she struggled in vain. 
So there was even more hardness in her tone than 
she felt in her effort to assert herself. 

“Yes, I believe I did crack it a little. Too 
bad,” with a mocking assumption of sympathy 
worse than expressed indifference. 

“Did you do that — did you take the fan with- 
out her knowledge and then break it, Marion ? ” 
interposed Mrs. Ware, sternly, but Kitty went 
bn; — 

“You — took — my fan, — my pretty fan, — 
I’ve had ever — since I first — went — to Papan- 
ti’s, — my first one, — and broke it — on pur- 
pose.” 

She did not gasp the words. They only came 
with difficulty, as though communication between 
brain and vocal organs were faulty. 

“ Absurd I I dare say you can get it mended,” 
said Marion, in the same hard tone. She gave 
the fan a little push, as though to close the sub- 
ject, and turned to her supper again. 

Mrs. Ware had pushed her chair back from the 
table, and for a second sat looking at her elder 
daughter. 

“ Marion,” said she, “ I am ashamed of you ! 


WHERE SHE RODE TO, 


215 


You had no right to take the fan in the first 
place. Your behavior now is making the whole 
matter infinitely worse. You can at least tell 
Kitty that you are sorry for the accident, and will 
do what you can to make up the loss to her. 
Marion ! ” sharply, as the girl paid no attention, 
but went on buttering a muffin with elaborate 
care. “ Do as I bid you ! ” 

But Marion was fairly trembling with passion. 
Interference was utterly thrown away, or, worse, 
added fuel to the flames. Paying no attention to 
her mother’s command, she said, in her most bit- 
ing way, to Kitty : — 

“ Mother sent you out of the room once. 
There is nobody else here who desires your com- 
pany.” 

Kitty gave the words no heed. Perhaps she 
did not hear them. Perhaps they lodged in that 
queer memory of hers, to spring up when they 
would make her most uncomfortable. 

“ It might be the same — to you. It would not 

— to me. Yes, on purpose. Just — as — you 
made moth — er hurry, so that — I — should not 

— see — you with it. Sneak ! ” • 

There was just the tiny grain of truth in this 

that made it sting ; and the last word filled the 


216 FORCED ACqUAINTANCES. 

measure, utterly abhorrent as was what it ex- 
pressed to Marion’s mind. 

She caught up the fan; Mrs. Ware, interpreting 
the action, started from her seat, but, before she 
could reach Marion, the girl, with flushed cheeks 
and sparkling eyes, had held the fragile thing 
across her knee ; one little effort and it was 
broken in two — utterly ruined. 

With a triumphant “ There she flung it on 
the table again. 

Then she was frightened. Her sister stood in 
dead silence for a full half-minute, hardly seeming 
to breathe. Every bit of color was gone from her 
always pale face ; her big gray eyes, twice as big 
and dark as usual, were fastened on Marion’s face 
with an expression her sister did not understand. 
But it was so unfamiliar, so strange in itself, as 
though every power and faculty of the girl were 
concentrated in some one thing, that she again 
felt small and embarrassed, as well as frightened, 
and, withal, the undefined anger that Kitty 
should “put her down.” 

Still without speaking, and with a kind of stiff- 
ness, as though the paralysis between brain and 
vocal organs had extended to her muscles, Kitty 
turned and moved toward the door. It was a gait 


WHEBE SHE BODE TO. 


217 


like an old person’s, whose joints are stiff and 
vision uncertain. She had not reached the 
threshold before the shock of revulsion came 
over Marion. 

“ Kitty, Kitty, I’m so sorry ! ” she cried, flying 
after her. “ I’ll get it mended. I didn’t mean to, 
truly ! ” 

Kitty did not shake her off, but passively en- 
dured the hand oi^ her arm ; but, the moment it 
was lifted, kept on her way and went upstairs, 
slowly, as usual, but with that new, queer kind of 
slowness. They heard the door shut and lock. 
For several minutes, neither of the two in the 
dining-room spoke. The look on her mother’s 
face reproached Marion even more than the 
words that broke the silence. 

“Pick up the pieces and keep them, Marion, 
They should be a lesson to you whenever you 
look at them.” 

“I hate the sight of the old thing! Whatever 
did possess me to take it I ” She buried her face 
in her hands. 

“ That was not the real trouble, though you did 
wrong in taking it. It is the old story, Marion,” 
the mother spoke sadly. “ Temper and a will 
that, instead of controlling the temper as it could, 


218 FORCED ACqUAINTANCES. 

only goads it on. No, don’t throw it away,” as 
her daughter made a motion to fling the ivory 
fragments into the fire, “I want you to keep 
it, — but don’t let Kitty see it again, poor 
child.” 

“ But it’s like having the albatross tied round 
my neck,” said Marion, with a gleam of her ac- 
customed humor. She was half crying, neverthe- 
less. “ I don’t see what made me do it. It was 
all done in a flash, before I thought.” 

“Do you ever think — that you are sisters ? O, 
Marion, it grieves me so that you two cannot 
bear and forbear a little.” 

“ I can’t help it if we are. I don’t know what 
relations are, half the time, anyway, but forced 
acquaintances.” 

But she was looking so unhappy that no one 
could have the heart to say more. Kitty’s pas- 
sions were so unlike anything she had ever seen, 
that, while not comprehending them in the least, 
she yet felt there was no use in going after her 
now. She must let her bide her own time. 
These moods always seemed to her like sulkiness, 
ugly brooding ovei^ injuries she herself would 
speedily have forgotten. Marion rather plumed 
herself on her ability to forget, like many other 


WHEBE SHE BODE TO. 219 

people, confounding it with forgive, and mistak- 
ing temperament for goodness. 

Kitty’s fits of temper might have been counted 
up on the fingers of one hand. She had not been 
in one for years ; not since Arthur, in the ardor 
of using his new surgical tools, had killed and 
dissected her pet cat, in mistake for one of the 
wild beasts that had its lair in the jungle of sheds 
back of the house. 

Fancy the horror of that moment when, enter- 
ing the laundry, a mutilated form stretched out 
on the ironing-board met her eye, her brother 
bending over with positive enjoyment in his face, 
and a terrible little knife in his hand, while igno- 
miniously flung to one side, telling the woful 
story even more unmistakably than the bits of 
scattered gray fur, was a beautiful, fluffy tail that 
only one cat in this vale of tears could have 
waved. It was not for days after that Kitty 
would even enter the room where her brother 
was, deep as w*as his regret. She mourned the 
murdered pet in the solitude of her own room, 
with the tail, the one memento that was left her 
to cherish, till her mother begJti to fear that grief 
and brooding would make the child sick. More 
than once she had awakened in the night, sobbing 


220 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


and clasping the tail close to her breast. It 
seemed as though the spectacle fairly haunted 
her. 

It was Arthur himself who found the cure at 
last. He hunted up a starved, purblind, deserted 
little kitten and left it in the dining-room, when 
Kitty should come in from school. At the first 
mew she shuddered and stopped her ears, then 
caught sight of the wretched little creature on 
the rug. Its forlorn aspect, the ribs showing 
through its sides, its seeming resignation to all 
the ills that can await an unwelcome kitten, 
appealed to her of itself; but another thought 
mingled with pity and the love she had for every 
dumb thing. Maybe it’s a child of my darling 
Tinker’s ” — derivation, Russian Katinka — “ I’ll 
adopt it and Tinker ’ll know. It’s all I can do 
for her now to be good to her little orphan.” 

When Arthur came into the room, ten minutes 
later, she was on the rug before the fire, with 
little Beauty and a saucer of milk in her lap, and 
a new expression on her face. It was of no con- 
sequence to her that the hungry little creature, 
getting almost bodily into the milk, had spilt and 
spattered it over her dress. She looked up as her 
brother entered, and, pointing to her new darling, 


WHEBE SHE BODE TO. 


221 


said, in a whisper, “Maybe it’s her child.” It 
was the first time she had voluntarily addressed 
him for weeks. 

That was all that was ever said, but the storm 
was over, and, as Marion thought, the whole affair 
forgotten. Arthur had understood ; perhaps even 
then, boy though he was, he had something of the 
intuition, the fine sympathy that is so invaluable 
a quality in a doctor ; or it may have been that in 
spite of the great external difference, that though 
the talent and energy and dogged perseverance 
that were his distinguishing traits, were the very 
ones that Kitty most conspicuously lacked, there 
was something, away underneath, that they had 
in common. Marion said “ What nonsense,” 
when her sister went without dinner that day, 
that the kitten’s first healthful nap might not be 
disturbed. 

Neither of the two in the dining-room had any 
farther appetite, and presently Mrs. Ware rang 
for Maggie. It was an unusually long evening. 
Marion tried to read, to sew, took up her embroid- 
ery, and in turn laid book and pillow-case and 
handkerchief down; finally she went into the 
parlor, cold as it was, and played till her fingers 
were numb. Shivering over the register, in the 


222 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


front hall, she heard the door above unlock, open, 
and Kitty come out. She dragged the lounge 
from the window and laid down ; evidently she 
meant to spend the night there. 

There the other two found her, when, a little 
later, they came up stairs. Nothing could be 
seen but the top of a brown head ; she was appar- 
ently fast asleep. Mrs. Ware drew the coverlids 
more carefully about her, put on another com- 
forter, but without arousing her, and saw that 
the sand -bags around the windows were snug in 
their places. 

But Kitty was never more wide-awake in her 
life. With the anger, the feeling she could never 
speak to, or have aught to do with her sister 
again, that this night had completed a breach 
begun, she did not know how or when, was the 
hopeless grief of a child ; and nearly fifteen 
though she was, there was a great deal of the 
child still about her. Mother had taken Marion’s 
part; she had been sent from the room in dis- 
grace, and she might as well give up at once, and 
die. It seems so easy to die when one is young 
and healthy. It had been so clearly Marion’s 
fault — this, too, with the passionate sense of in- 
justice that a child has. It is the utter hopeless- 


WHERE SHE ROHE TO. 


223 


ness, the inability to see beyond the present, that 
makes his troubles so much heavier than more 
real ones that come later. And mingled with the 
passion and grief was sorrow at the loss that 
would have seemed to Marion utterly dispropor- 
tionate. She only saw a pretty fan broken. 
Kitty had something of the feeling for cherished 
possessions that she had for the pets her sister de- 
tested. A new fan would have made it all right 
to the elder, provided only it were as pretty. 
Not the loveliest that ever came out of shop could 
have replaced it to the younger. 

She had not even stirred when a kiss was 
pressed on the crown of her head, though it al- 
ways seemed to her as though she could not go to 
sleep without kissing mother. And perhaps that 
was the reason she could not, as much as excite- 
ment. Ten o’clock sounded from the dining- 
room clock, eleven, when suddenly, underneath 
her four comforters, she became aware that some- 
body was moving in Marion’s room. The ex- 
pected burglar had arrived at last — and, with a 
bound, the comforters lay in a heap on one side 
of the lounge, and she stood shivering on the 
other. 

Peeping through the half-open door, she saw 


224 FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES, 

somebody with a gray shawl flung over her shoul- 
ders. It was her mother, in her night-dress ; she 
was trying to heat something over the lamp. 
That was what made it give such a queer light — 
not because it came from a dark lantern. Then 
she heard a voice from the bed that sounded like 
Marion’s, only it was husky and broken. 

“Won’t Maggie ever come? O, mother, do 
make her hurry. O dear ! ” 

“Yes, dear, yes,” and Mrs. Ware went to the 
other door and spoke to Maggie, who must be 
already up, for there was a clatter in the kitchen 
as though she were dancing over all the crockery 
in the house. 

“ Kitty, is that you? Put something over you,” 
wrapping her in one of the rejected quilts. “ You 
mustn’t take cold, too.” 

“ What’s the matter — what is it — O mother, 
she isn’t — isn’t — dying?” as the gasps came 
from the room on the left, with now and then a 
little moan, as though wrung by stabbing pain, 
not to be controlled. 

“No, no. She has taken a terrible cold. Keep 
yourself covered up. You can’t do anything.” 

Mrs. Ware did not dream of uttering the last 
words as a reproach. But as such they went 


WHEBE SHE BODE TO. 


225 


straight to Kitty’s heart, in the morbid excite- 
ment that made her susceptible to every influ- 
ence. No, she could not do anything. She never 
could. She was born useless — fit for nothing. 
Why — yes, she could do something. And she 
would. 

“ Yes, I can. I can go for the doctor.” 

“ You ! ” 

Even in her anxiety and hurry, the mother’s 
amazement overcame everything else. She could 
only repeat, — 

“You!” 

“ Yes, I’ll go. Let me go.” 

“ Maggie is going as soon as she gets the fire 
started. I must have hot water and mustard.” 

“ She is so slow ; and she don’t know where the 
house is, either. I won’t be a minute.” 

Mrs. Ware paused. None knew better than 
she just how slow their domestic was, excepting 
when hieing on her own business. But the vil- 
lage was a mile off, it was a lonesome road, and 
there was not even a star out. Let Kitty travel 
that long mile, — Kitty, whom nothing could 
persuade to go upstairs alone after dark? But, 
as if in answer to her hesitation, there was an- 
other moan from the adjoining room. The dan- 


226 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


ger to Marion was real. That to Kitty only 
imaginary ; and she decided. 

“ Go, then, dear,” and the good-night kiss she 
had never missed since she was a baby was 
pressed against her cheek, warming her desolate 
little heart, and giving her new courage for an 
enterprise that was as big to her as leading a 
forlorn hope has been to recognized heroes. “ Put 
on your thick sacque, and be sure you wear 
rubbers.” 

She hurried back to Marion as Maggie, whose 
intellect, owing to the unexpected strain upon it, 
seemed to be giving way, came up the front stairs 
at last, with a tub of hot water that at every step 
she splashed over the stairs and her feet, accom- 
panying this series of accidents by subdued howls 
at every fresh splash, while under her arm was a 
box of breakfast cocoa, seized in mistake for the 
mustard. 

“ The mustard, Maggie. It is on the same 
shelf. Go down and bring it to me.” Mrs. Ware 
spoke in the quiet tones of command, that would 
have had their effect on any but an Irish servant- 
girl. 

“ Yis.” 

She did not offer to stir, but stood gazing at 


WHERE SHE ROBE TO, 


227 


Marion with the fascination that illness and mis- 
fortune have for the lower classes. 

“ Go at once ! ” 

“Yis.” 

She was on tiptoe behind Mrs. Ware, as she 
wrung out hot flannels, watching Marion’s gasps 
with ghoul-like interest. 

Kitty had finished dressing, and stood with hat 
and mittens on, as her mother, in despair, came 
into the hall to go in quest of the mustard 
herself. 

“ I’m ready. I won’t be a minute.” 

“ Don’t be afraid. Be as quick as you can. 
The doctor will bring you home. There is no 
danger, except in your own imagination.” 

She was at the front door as she heard another 
“ Yis ” from above, and darted out, feeling that, 
if they had waited for Maggie in this emergency, 
they would indeed have leaned upon a broken 
reed. 

The doctor lived in about the middle of the vil- 
lage, but it was the longest mile Kitty ever trav- 
elled. Garrick Street was all very well ; but when 
she came out on the long, lonely country road, 
her heart beat with a rapidity caused only in 
small part by running. Every tree and bush was 


228 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


a man about to spring out on her ; she shivered 
anew at every fresh gust of wind through the 
bare tree-tops ; while all the stories of deeds of 
darkness, read, perhaps, long ago, thronged with 
terrible vividness through her mind. But worst 
of all were the horrors memory, assisted by imagi- 
nation, conjured up. There seemed to start from 
every corner and cranny of her mind everything 
she had ever read of ghosts and goblins, doppel- 
gangers, and frightful stories of mesmeric influ- 
ence. 

She dared not look around, mindful of the fear- 
ful fiend 

“ that trod her close behind.” 

She did not venture to glance to either side ; the 
Erl-king’s daughters were dancing and beckoning 
to her from that row of willows on the right. 
On the left, Frankenstein’s monster grinned and 
glared, and kept pace with her in every boulder 
and misshapen old tree-trunk. Straight ahead 
she kept her eyes on the long road that looked so 
endless, and tried to think of something diametri- 
cally opposed to such blood-curdling thoughts. 
What was that paragraph in chemistry that had 
happily fallen to her to-day ? 


WBEBE SHE BODE TO, 


229 


“ Coal-gas is very poisonous, and, even in small 
quantities, exceedingly deleterious. Its unpleas- 
ant odor, though often annoying, is a great pro- 
tection, as we are thereby warned of its presence. 
Its symbol is HgO.” 

She seized on it as a charm to lay any ghost 
alive ; no, not alive, a ghost could hardly be said 
to be alive ; but what was he out of his proper 
place in graveyards and haunted houses? What 
was a thing that was out of its proper place? 
She had read that somewhere, too. It was in a 
little book called “Aunt Judy’s Tales.” It was 
a weed. But under any circumstances could a 
ghost be properly said to be a weed ? There ! she 
was thinking of the forbidden subject again. 

“ Coal-gas is very poisonous, and, even in small 
quantities, exceedingly deleterious. Its unpleas- 
ant odor, though often annoying, is a great pro- 
tection, as we are thereby warned of its presence. 
Its symbol is HgO.” 

The far-off, mysterious music of the wind 
through the telegraph wires was in the air. It 
recalled the music that must have been heard on 
that Christmas night, — 

“ In the solemn midnight, 

Centuries ago.” 


230 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Midnight! Yes, it must be pretty nearly that 
now. She had never been alone and awake in 
her life at that hour without those grewsome lines 
coming into her head : — 

“ ’Tis now the very witching time of night, 

When churchyards yawn — ” 

In spite of herself, poetry and fright were again 
rampant over science and common-sense. Could 
it be that she was going mad ! — The graveyard was 
just beyond — like other stories she had read, too, 

— she must get beyond it before it struck twelve 

— and that her hair would turn gray with fright. 
Her brain seemed bursting with the speed and 
terror. There I she would not, must not, think. 
But, instead of “ Coal-gas is very poisonous,” she 
found herself repeating : — 

“‘It might some day make the difference of 
having something to regret a whole life-time.’ ” 

What was it mother had said it about? Oh, 
yes. But that would not be what she would have 
to regret. Not mother nor anybody knew that 
terrible thing — that last night she had hated 
Marion, and had wished her dead. That was 
what was happening. But nobody would know 
who had caused it — only the dreadful faces and 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 


231 


voices around her. They were mocking her and 
taunting her with it. “ Coal-gas is very deleteri- 
ous, and, even — ” She was going to have the 
wish she had wished so hard that every drop 
of blood in her seemed to leave her body to 
enter it. 

“ Oh, no, no ! ” cried Kitty — that is, she fan- 
cied she cried it, so intense was the thought. 
“ Don’t die ! oh, don’t die ! I didn’t mean it ! ” 

The old cemetery was about half way on the 
road. Nobody had been buried there for half a 
century. It was a queer old place, with big dark 
tombs, overhanging trees, and a lovely lane at 
one end, bordered with trees and bushes, and 
leading to a pleasant back country road. In sum- 
mer it was lovely and restful, but in winter the 
lonesomest, dolefullest place between Sleepy Hol- 
low and the village. Just as Kitty had gathered 
herself up for yet greater speed for those few 
rods, an extra gust of wind went sweeping 
through the trees, the ice in the adjoining meadow 
cracked with a wild, unearthly sound; and at 
that moment two or three of the village churches 
began to strike twelve. 

What availed Eliot and Storer against that 
awful combination ? Instantly it was interpreted. 


232 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ — a dying man’s groans, 

Mixed with the rattle of dead men’s bones.” 

Yet all the time she was mechanically repeating, 
“Coal-gas is very deleterious, — ” It was too 
much. With a wild shriek of “ H2.O ! ” she set 
out at a pace that even the inhabitants of the 
cemetery would have found it difficult to keep up 
with. 

The mile was seldom traversed in shorter time. 
It did not take long to get the doctor up, nor to 
explain what was wanted. Nor even to her 
impatience was it many minutes before his horse 
was harnessed and they were driving rapidly 
back. She was weak and faint, and her legs 
trembled and tottered beneath her like a person’s 
just up from a severe illness, as she clung to the 
doctor up the path and steps. The little moans 
still came from the room above, striking on her 
heart with mingled chill and relief. She looked 
up into his face, trying to read the verdict ; but 
a physician’s face is as closed to other people’s as 
theirs are open to him. She dropped into the 
first chair in the hall, and listened breathlessly. 

He did not say much ; approved of what had 
been done, called for a glass, and poured out some 
medicine, with directions how it was to be taken. 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 


233 


Then, after pronouncing it pneumonia, he began 
buttoning his coat, saying he would call again in 
the morning. He did not commit himself to 
much of anything, the anxious listener in the 
hall thought. He was probably afraid to tell 
them she was dying. There was something so 
terrifying about it all from its very strangeness, 
Marion had never been ill in her life, had hardly 
had ache or pain in the vigorous health with 
which they were both blessed. The doctor was 
in the lower hall, drawing on his gloves, when a 
hand was laid on his arm. 

“ Will she — will she die ? ” whispered a voice. 
“ Tell me ; I want to know — I must know,” and 
Kitty’s eyes looked up big and frightened from 
her white face ; one hand clutched the fur-coated 
arm as though it would never let go, the other 
was fingering the locket that in all her haste and 
excitement had been tied on. 

“ There is no immediate danger. With care I 
think she will get over it,” the doctor answered. 

She drew a long breath and loosened her 
hold. 

“ You must go to bed yourself,” — he was look- 
ing at her in a keen, professional way, — “or I 
shall have another patient to-morrow.” 


234 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ I did not take cold, I ran so fast.” She felt 
that sleep was impossible. 

“ Take something hot, and go to bed at once,” 
— he spoke with professional authority, — “ or you 
may have to stay there longer than your sister. 
Are you going to mind me ? ” 

“Yes,” said Kitty, obediently. 

“ That’s right. Good-night. ” 

“ Good-night.” 

“She is breathing easier and is asleep,” said 
Mrs. Ware. “ I am going to lie down here on 
the lounge. You get into my bed.” So Kitty 
mechanically undressed and crept in, and, despite 
her expectations, at once fell fast asleep. 

She did not awake till late the next morning, 
opening her heavy eyes with the dull sense of 
something that had happened, whose weight was 
yet resting on her. Just then her mother came 
into the room. The doctor had come and gone, 
and had reported Marion better. Mrs. Ware was 
folding and putting away the clean clothes as she 
answered. The sight of her occupation was in 
itself soothing, as homely sights and sounds are at 
such times. “ When you are dressed she wants 
to see you. Don’t stay long, and don’t make her 
talk too much.” 


WllEBE SHE BODE TO. 


235 


Marion held out her hand as her sister entered, 
with a little involuntary, half-diffident gesture. 
Kitty came to the bedside and took it, shyly, too. 
How queer to see her active sister in bed at this 
hour. She looked different, too; one night of 
sharp suffering had left her face drawn and 
pinched. Something like Mary Home’s, and 
something of the feeling she had had at the bed- 
side of her sick school-mate was on Kitty now. 

“It was all my fault, Kitty,” and the huskiness 
was not all to be attributed to inflammation of 
the bronchial tubes. “ O Kitty, I’m so sorry.” 

“ Don’t, don’t, Marion. It was my fault, every 
bit.” 

Somehow the hand on the bed had drawn the 
other closer and nearer. 

“ I thought last night I was going to die,” she 
went on, solemnly, with something of the frank- 
ness of that hour on her still, when all pettiness 
and vanities fall away, and we feel we may say 
what we will, and wonder that people will not 
always be their very selves to themselves and to 
one another. “ The most I thought of, truly, was 
what I’d done and how I hated you. O, Kitty, if 
I had died, and hadn’t had time to tell you it was 
my — ” She did not flnish, partly because her own 


236 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

choking would not permit it, partly because her 
hand had been unconsciously drawing her sister 
nearer with every word, till, suddenly, Kitty’s 
head was buried in the pillow; but, muffled as 
her voice was, every word fell with distinctness 
on the elder girl’s ear. 

“ I thought you were dying, too. I was sure of 
it. And that it was because I had wished it so 
hard. I read a story once of a man who killed 
another man out in China just by willing it. O, 
Marion, if you had ; if you had ! It would have 
been I who had killed you, as truly as Arthur 
killed Tinker.” It was the first time the name 
of her murdered .pet had crossed her lips. Had 
she forgotten it ? 

“Would you have cared, really ? ” 

“ I never knew — before — dreadful run — 
thought I never could care for you as I did for 
mother and Arthur — seems as though it all came 
out, all at once, — after it had been choked up — 
and was like to choke me — the ghosts were after 
me for wishing it — ” 

“ Ghosts ! — what ghosts ? ” No wonder Marion 
was bewildered at this incoherent outburst in 
her left ear. 

“ And when I did get to the doctor’s gate at 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 237 

last, I couldn’t undo the latch, and just then a lot 
of clothes, left out in the yard, began flapping, 
and I tumbled up the steps and lay there sprawl- 
ing and floundering about, thinking the ghosts 
were grabbing my legs. Then the window 
opened, and the doctor said ‘ Who’s there ? ’ 
It’s so hard to speak one’s own name. I thought 
I should have to say ‘Rev. Mr. Duncan,’ and 
then the thought of him, in that attitude, over- 
came me, and I laughed. The first thing the 
doctor did was to make me drink something. I 
could not well explain the cause of my untimely 
merriment, and I believe he thought it was 
hysterics.” In which hypothesis the doctor had 
probably been not far wrong. 

“ Did you go ? ” None knew better than Mar- 
ion the depth and extent of Kitty’s “ cowardice.” 
Nothing could have answered her own question, 
or have endorsed its reply, as that did. “I 
didn’t know you cared enough to go alone next 
door.” 

“ I didn’t, either. You say such horrid things, 
and always seem ready to laugh at me. You are 
so clever, Marion. I don’t know any girl I ad- 
mire so much. And I can’t do anything, you 
know.” 


238 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ You — admire — me ? ” slowly and wonder- 
ingly. 

The unconscious appeal to noblesse oblige 
touched her two-fold — her better nature, and the 
chord that always vibrated so quickly at admira- 
tion or censure. If it had been Kitty’s aim to 
have won her way straight to her sister’s heart, 
she could have chosen no better method. The 
humility touched her all the more that it, too, 
was so unexpected. Once before she had caught 
a glimpse of the real Kitty that was inside the 
outward shell of indifference. Sensitive of her 
very sensitiveness, there was, too, the difficulty, 
nay the impossibility, of expressing what was 
keenly felt. 

“ I never can forget you saved my life. And 
after what I’d done, too. Kiss me, dear.” And 
for the first time in their lives the two sisters did 
kiss each other from their hearts. Perhaps the 
most memorable part of it was that both had said, 
“ It was my fault.” 

Not that they ceased all at once to jar and 
quarrel. With two such opposing temperaments, 
more or less clashing would always be inevitable. 
But there was a guard over each tongue now, 
and underneath, always and never again for- 


WHERE SHE RODE TO. 


239 


gotten, the warm, sisterly affection that had lain 
dormant so long, that drew them ever nearer 
together. 

Marion had time enough to think well of this 
and other things, in her irksome confinement ; for 
it was a week before she left her bed, and a much 
longer period that she had “ to coddle herself like 
any old woman.” Perhaps she made the acquaint- 
ance of other people as well as her sister, with 
another lesson about governing her sharp tongue. 
Mrs. Eliot sent in a bowl of beef-tea with a plate 
of graham gems, and it is possible the invalid 
may have found both a little bitter, though the 
beef-tea was delicious, and the crusty little brown 
cakes inimitable. Mrs. Drew also contributed a 
rabbit of blanc mange, to make which she bor- 
rowed the Wares’ jelly-mould and returned it — 
after some weeks — with a fragment of the right 
ear chipped out. There was something the mat- 
ter with bunny’s anatomy, and, though Marion 
thanked the donor as gratefully as might be, it 
was the hens, and not the invalid, that did the 
enjoying. 

But what touched her the most was some Char- 
lotte Russe from Effie Faulkner, who called, in 
addition, every day to inquire for her. She had 


240 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

not been to the house since the fair, whether or 
no she had any suspicions concerning that night. 
Moreover, the Charlotte Russe was perfection, 
and to find Miss Faulkner proficient in an art of 
which she herself was ignorant, gave her a place 
in Marion’s estimation she had not hitherto oc- 
cupied. 

In a little box, way back in her neat bureau 
drawer, there lay a torn glove, a broken fan, and 
a little silver dagger, that spoke, more eloquently 
than any voice, of self-will, temper, and that de- 
termination to be second to none, that but too 
often with her took the form of envy. 

As for Kitty, the unwonted feelings had their 
influence in preparing her for what followed. 


CHAPTER XI. 


BLACK FRIDAY. 

“It’s time to get up, Kitty. I’ve called you 
three times already. The first bell rang ever so 
long ago — and there is the second ! ” 

“Oh!” and Kitty rubbed her eyes sleepily a 
minute, then rolled out of bed. “ I should think 
you might have called me before, Marion Ware I ” 
Perhaps the first mishap of that wretched day 
was her rolling out on the wrong side, for her 
troubles began directly, though she little knew 
what an awful climax they were to reach. The 
button-hook could not be found and the hair-pins 
which she essayed to use as a substitute doubled 
up one after another ; the brush slid down behind 
the bureau in using it as a prop to keep the glass 
at the right angle, and a button flew ofl^ her gown 
just as she thought herself dressed, at last. She 
had barely time to swallow a biscuit and rush for 
the train, without a moment for looking over the 
chemistry that she had intended to get up early 
241 


242 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

to study. This “ getting up early ” was a favor- 
ite salve for evening laziness. If she did have 
five minutes to spare before breakfast, it was 
oftener spent in giving Peep the information “ he 
was the prettiest little bird that ever lived,” than 
in acquiring any herself. 

The train was in at the usual time, she did not 
walk more slowly than usual, there was no appar- 
ent reason to her, at least, why the big school- 
house door, shut promptly at nine, should be 
closed when she got there. Possibly walking 
around the long way that was so pleasant, past 
the parks and up the broad, sunny avenue, in- 
stead of the shorter one that was narrow and 
sunless and bordered only with bakeshops and 
piano manufactories, may have had something to 
do with it. 

Miss Hallock met her at the school-room door, 
and her, “Late again. Miss Ware?” said with 
grave disapproval, was worse than being sum- 
moned directly after to the tribunal of the chem- 
istry teacher’s desk, and receiving a severe lec- 
ture. She had been late every day that week but 
one, with unnecessary accuracy of statistics, and 
the “only reason she hadn’t been Tuesday was 
because she was absent.” Kitty listened with 


BLACK FBIlbAY. 


243 


her usual indifference, fingered her locket and 
went to her seat, wondering if she could again 
persuade Marion to write her the excuse de* 
manded. Why would not a season excuse do, to 
be shown at each fresh delinquency, instead of 
this incessant demand for single tickets? It 
might read — 

Literature came the first hour. She was inter- 
rupted by an announcement that filled her heart 
with terror. It was from Miss Hallock, and was 
something quite unprecedented; something she 
could no more accomplish than any of the impos- 
sible fairy tasks of sorting a bushel of gay- col- 
ored silks, or counting the leaves on an oak tree. 
Alas, no friendly fairy was at hand to wave her 
wand, Marion was five miles distant, in bed, and 
what Miss Hallock had said was that instead of 
the usual literature lesson, they were to write a 
composition. No welcome task to a school-girl 
at any time ; it was impossible for one who had 
never written an essay in her life. The subject 
was “Birds.” 

Easy enough most of the girls apparently found 
it, as, after a minute or two of thought, they fell 
to work. But Kitty waited in vain for any in- 
spiration to aid her in covering that acre of white 


244 


FORCED A CQ UAINTANCES. 


paper. She was at her wit’s end, and the first 
quarter of an hour was spent in paralyzed des- 
pair; the second in endeavoring, fruitlessly, to 
get an idea from her neighbor’s paper ; the third 
in trying to conjure up some excuse for going 
home, but as she had never had a headache in her 
life, could not have fainted under any circum- 
stances, and saw no way to produce a nosebleed, 
she was forced to relinquish that method of es- 
cape, when a glance at the clock showed her she 
had just fifteen minutes left. Not even her as- 
surance was equal to handing in a blank sheet, 
with, too, her record of bright essays. To her 
guilty consciousness, it would have been equiva- 
lent to a confession. Her glance clockward had 
taken in Miss Hallock, as well as it seemed to her 
that her teacher was regarding her suspiciously. 
She must appear, at least, to be doing something 
and, on the impulse she seized her pen. With 
the clutch, was a sudden rift in the clouds ; there 
was magic in the feeling, as though ideas flowed 
from pen to brain, instead of in their ordinary 
course. She had no time to hesitate, to consider 
or arrange, as with one eye on the clock, page 
after page was covered with the rag-bag of her 
mind. Jacky was again under the elf’s pro tec- 


BLACK FBIDAY. 


245 


tion, but only apparently ; for he had lost the cap, 
the elf had turned on his whilom master, and not 
only refusing him aid, was about to mock him 
and trick him and reveal him to the world in his 
true character. When the bell struck, the four 
large pages were covered, and Kitty handed her 
essay in with a sigh of relief. 

The next hour was devoted to experiments in 
chemistry. The laboratory was in the basement, 
and was not well lighted at any time. But on 
stormy days, like the present one, it was so dark 
that the girls were obliged to supply the deficiency 
of light by twisting bits of tin foil around the 
base of the Bunsen burners, that supplied the 
heat for the experiments, thus converting the hot, 
colorless flame to a less hot but brilliant jet. To 
protect their dresses from the chemicals, they put 
on old waterproofs, calico dresses, big aprons, old 
skirts — the effect produced often being gro- 
tesque. 

The brilliant flames at intervals about the dark 
room, the long tables, surmounted by the great 
iron hoods to carry off the smoke and odor, the 
figures in their odd array, bending silently over 
tubes and retorts, appealed to Kitty’s imagination 
as some underground abode, with hobgoblins at 


246 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


work. Full of this fancy, she stood gazing about 
her, oblivious that every one else was at work, till 
her neighbor good-naturedly aroused her, with a 
whispered, “Look out, the teacher is looking at 
you I ” 

Kitty had been in the habit of watching this 
girl and following, blindly, every step of her ex- 
periment. But what was she to do now, when 
her neighbor had nearly finished it? Clearly it 
would not do to stand there idle ; the teacher cer- 
tainly was looking at her. She must, at least, ap- 
pear to be busy. 

Accordingly, she took a few drops of every 
chemical on the shelf, shook them well together, 
balanced the test-tube over the burner, and lean- 
ing against the wall, awaited the result of her 
original researches. It came soon, and in an un- 
expected form. 

Bang! 

The test-tube was shattered, the liquid sizzled 
over the flame ; everybody stopped work, with ex- 
clamations and questions, one particularly ner- 
vous girl gave an hysterical scream and ran out 
of the room. For once, it was lucky for Kitty 
that she never stood upright, if there were any- 
thing at hand to lean against ^ for had she been in 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


247 


her place, she might have lost her eyesight. The 
girls flocked around her desk, and the teacher ap- 
peared upon the scene. 

“What were you doing. Miss Ware?” she 
asked sternly. 

“I — don’t — know,” faltered Kitty, startled 
out of her usual composure, but recovering her- 
self the next moment, to add, in a gently explan- 
atory tone, “It blew up.” 

“Was it nitrous oxide you were making?” 
was the suspicious inquiry. 

It might have been, for all Miss Ware knew to 
the contrary. 

“ Perhaps,” she suggested, “ I may have made a 
little mistake.” 

“I think it quite likely you did,” responded 
the teacher grimly, looking about to see the ex- 
tent of the damage, and relieved to find none of 
the girls in the neighborhood had been hurt. 
Then she turned again to Kitty. 

“You may return to the room. Miss Ware,” 
she said, severely. “I shall refer this to Miss 
Hallock.” 

Kitty did as she was bidden, that is, in so far 
as leaving the laboratory. For obvious reasons, 
she did not wish to attract Miss Hallock’s atten- 


248 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

tion by returning alone to the class-room; so she 
sat down on the stairs and waited till she could 
join the other girls. 

The chemistry recitation did not come till after 
the long recess ; so, had she chosen, she would 
have had half an hour in which to look the lesson 
over. But she had escaped so long that it was 
not till the class was in the recitation-room that 
a vagrant fear was dismissed with “ I dare say I 
sha’n’t get called on. If I do, I can get through 
somehow.” 

The chemistry teacher was a particularly fine 
teacher, insisting on good, thorough work. De- 
ceit or pretence she hated with a virulence that 
usually made itself known on occasion for it; 
peeping into the book at recitations, stealing a 
glance on another’s paper at examination, met 
with no mercy from her. She had not the sym- 
pathy with the girls that was one great reason of 
Miss Hallock’s popularity, and she had one great 
failing: she was a living example of how a virtue 
carried to excess becomes a vice. She was fairly 
morbidly conscientious. Exacting faithful work 
from the girls, she was even more determined 
that the teaching, on her side, should be as 
thorough as the learning on theirs. Naturally, 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


249 


Kitty Ware was not a favorite of hers, and if she 
had had her way, would long ago have been 
expelled. Why she was not was to her mind 
inexplicable, unless, as Arthur suggested, she 
was retained to point a moral, as in olden times 
malefactors were left hanging in chains as a warn- 
ing to the community. 

This particular morning it looked as though 
she were to escape unscathed, for the hour was 
half over and the teacher had called only on those 
girls who were always well prepared. The lesson 
was an unusually interesting one, and, being an 
enthusiast in her specialty, it was pleasanter to 
listen to correct, scholarly answers, and to answer 
herself intelligent questions than to be pained by 
ignorance and blunders. This same enthusiasm, 
incomprehensible as it was, had more than once 
saved Kitty, and she drew a breath of relief as 
she saw that it probably would now. Her hopes 
were destined to be terribly shattered, and she 
herself to experience a mortification that for 
years after she could not recall without pain. 

As the last half-hour was well on its way there 
was an interruption, and when the lesson was 
resumed, enthusiasm was over, and conscientious- 
ness more rampant than ever after its temporary 


250 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


eclipse. The interruption consisted of a party of 
ladies and gentlemen. They were English people 
of distinction, and as the school was one of the 
show-places of the city, they had called there, 
listening to any recitation that was especially 
interesting. The principal said something to the 
teacher, and she replied, — Kitty caught only the 
last two words of the answer, — “fine recitation,” 
and dismay took possession of her soul again as 
she saw she had interpreted truly ; for the party 
was introduced and given seats, the principal 
himself remaining. They were supplied with 
books. It was a reprieve. Perhaps, after all, it 
was nearing the end of the hour. Besides, the 
chemistry teacher took such a pride in her classes, 
and in her own particular section above all, that 
of course she would want to show off the smart 
ones — which was precisely what the teacher did 
wish very much to do, and which any other 
would have done. She wished it so much that 
she immediately called, “ Miss Ware ! ” 

Miss Ware arose with the feeling that her hour 
had come. She told Gertie Meredith afterwards 
that it was a presentiment ; as she was given to 
having presentiments, it was small wonder that 
now and then one of them hit the mark. Possi- 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


251 


bly the recollection that she was already under 
the ban of her teacher’s displeasure, and that she 
knew nothing whatever of the day’s lesson, may 
have come to the aid of prophetic insight. 

It was an easy question, but she could only say, 
with the usual “ Why-re ally-how-shoul d-I-be-ex- 
pected-to-know-that ” air, “I don’t know.” The 
teacher frowned. To conscientiousness came 
vexation and pride. It was the worse that Miss 
Ware herself was so impervious to mortification. 
She should not escape so easily ; but again the 
question was a simple one. 

. “ What is soap ? ” 

Kitty knew it when she saw it; surely that 
was enough for all practical purposes. She shook 
her head. Another “ I don’t know,” said Miss 
Ware, in apparent surprise that any one should 
inquire where sugar came from ; the grocer’s, of 
course. 

“You don’t seem very well prepared with 
to-day’s lesson,” said the teacher, grimly. “We 
will try yesterday’s.” 

But with the same result, except that “ I don’t 
know” was occasionally varied by “I have for- 
gotten.” The visitors, too well bred to show 
their surprise, looked uncomfortable, and kept 


252 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


their eyes on their books with a studious show of 
indifference. Conscientiousness was again in the 
background, but this time its place was usurped 
by anger. And Miss Ware stood there as uncon- 
cerned as possible. She had not had a perfect 
lesson that year, and had been late every day that 
week but one. Before the principal, too ! 

It was nothing less than an exhaustive oral 
examination now. Not alone to-day’s lesson, nor 
yesterday’s, but way back in preceding chapters 
whose very existence had been forgotten. Ques- 
tions concerning binary compounds ; what were 
they ? acids and alkalies ; they were one to her ; 
salts and bases ; what was the difference ? metal- 
loids, quantivalence, formulae ; she tried to give 
one of the latter, but got it hopelessly mixed up 
with algebra. 

There was a hush on the class as the girls 
looked from one to another in astonishment. 
Didn’t she really know? Good-breeding had 
been flung to the winds, and the guests were 
staring at the young lady in amazement, too, 
but pity as well. It was hardly up to the English 
idea of a “fine recitation,” but she was such a 
pretty girl; diffident, perhaps. It could not be 
that she did not really know. Tongue-tied they 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


253 


might also have thought, for as the questions rat- 
tled around her like hailstones, she was reduced 
to a mere feeble shake of the head at each suc- 
ceeding one, though they had reached the first 
chapters now, and were the mere A B C of chem- 
istry. They might as well have been the ABC 
of Sanscrit. No sense of pity had the teacher, 
only outraged self-esteem and a determination to 
punish Miss Ware as she deserved. 

She stood there, to appearance cool and self- 
possessed, one hand fingering the silent confidant 
at her throat, and answering each fresh question 
by a mere careless shake of the head. Though 
she could not have remembered the answers to 
save her life, some of the questions were im- 
pressed upon her to the end of it. “ What is the 
chemistry of bread-making ? ” “ How is illumi- 
nating gas purified ? ” “ What is the symbol for 

hydrochloric acid ? ” 

They used it nearly every day they had experi- 
ments in the laboratory, downstairs. The sym- 
bol was on the bottle. It had been repeated a 
hundred times in her hearing. Of course, she 
would know that. 

The teacher had paused for an answer, tired of 
the shake of the head, and was looking straight 


254 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

at her. So were the girls ; those on the front 
settees turning around. The visitors were star- 
ing too. The teacher had evidently made up her 
mind to have one answer at least. 

Kitty was breathing with a little difficulty. 
There seemed to be a kind of numbness settled 
upon her, as though the blood had stopped flow- 
ing. Would the torture never end? The silence 
was terrible. A sudden panic, as of a stage 
fright, came over her. Something must be said 
With an effort she summoned all her stock of 
knowledge. 

“ H^O,” she murmured, faintly. 

There was another dreadful pause. Some of 
the girls giggled. 

“Miss Ware,” said the chemistry teacher, 
awfully, “ you may sit down. If you are one-half 
as much ashamed of this disgraceful exhibition as 
I am, you must be in a sorry state.” 

Kitty did sit down, even stopping to arrange 
her dress; yet what she had suffered in those 
fifteen minutes only her locket could have told. 

Not yet was the end of that memorable day. 
It was unfortunate for Kitty that in this instance 
the spirit of prophecy deserted her. Had it been 
present, as usual, she would certainly have gone 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


255 


home, though in defiance of one of the most 
stringent rules — that no one should leave school 
before the regular hour of dismissal, two o’clock. 

There was but one hour left when the school 
met in the hall. The compositions had all appar- 
ently been read when the principal arose ; but, 
instead of dismissing the school, said he had one 
more essay to read, the production of a young 
lady from whom one had the right to look for 
something unusually good, as her compositions 
throughout the year had been of more than 
average excellence. They should judge for them- 
selves whether such expectations had been real- 
ized to-day. The essay was written by Miss 
Kitty W are ; and he proceeded to read it. 

It was well worth listening to, for into it had 
been poured ajl the treasures of the author’s 
mind. The girls began to look amused on the 
first page, smiled on the second, the smile 
widened into a laugh as it went on, and, by the 
time the fourth page was reached, the principal 
was interrupted more than once by laughter from 
all sides. 

It began tritely — but, then, even Homer nods 
— with “ There has been a great deal of beautiful 
poetry written about birds. One of the gayest is 


256 


FORGED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the ‘ Bob-o-link.’ ” Here came in appropriately a 
stanza or two from that poem, thence gliding 
into “ June ” and Lowell, Shelley and the “ Sky- 
lark,” Tennyson and the “ Owl.” 

“ Alone and warming his five wits, 

The white owl in the belfry sits.” 

Then it skipped abruptly off to Mother Goose and 
her popular lyric of four-and-twenty blackbirds, 
waxed morally reflective with “ Birds in their 
little nests agree,” thence wandered off, with no 
other connection than the writer’s will, to — 

“ Lavrocks wake the merry ‘mom 
Aloft on dewy wing ; 

The merle in his noontide bower 
Makes woodland echoes ring. 

The mavis, wild wi’ mony a note 
Sings drowsy day to rest ; 

In love and freedom all rejoice 
Wi’ care nor thrall oppressed.” 

It grew melancholy toward the end with the 
dying swan, lit up a little with the sandpiper, 
and ended gloomily with — 

“ The startled bats flew out, bird after bird. 

The screech-owl overhead began to flutter. 

And seemed to mock the cry that it had heard 
Some dying victim utter.” 

“Did you write it? did you write it?” asked 
the girls, as they came into the room again; a 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


257 


superfluous as well as painful question, in view 
of the late evidence ; but the feminine mind 
does sometimes propound similar queries. Kitty, 
coolly answering, was in an inward tumult of 
emotion. On one thing she was resolved. Never 
to set foot inside that school again, though 
Arthur put the threatened meal-bag into requi- 
sition. 

“ Wait a minute. Miss Ware,” said Miss Hah 
lock, as she was on her way to the dressing- 
room ; “ I wish to speak with you.” 

She returned to her seat with an indifference 
that was not all feigned. It was, “Fate, I defy 
you ! You can do no more.” Pretty soon they 
two were alone in the big school-room, and Miss 
Hallock beckoned to her. She handed her the 
composition. 

“ It must be written over,” she said, gravely. 
“ I should have been sorry to receive such a pro- 
duction from any girl, but particularly from one 
who can do so well. How did it happen?” 

Kitty could not offer the real explanation. 
The proffered one did not give satisfaction. Miss 
Hallock shook her head. 

“ You could have thought of something better. 
Your essays have been the best in the room. 


258 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Such wilful neglect is all the worse when one 
has power to do so well. I shall expect a good 
one from you in its stead. No, wait. I have not 
done. How long a time did you spend on 
to-day’s chemistry?” 

Now the girls were required to make out a list 
of study-hours every week, giving the exact time 
spent in preparing each separate lesson. It en- 
tailed another deceit on Kitty’s part, and on the 
papers that she made out these hours were set 
down at random. But, with Miss Hallock’s eyes 
looking into hers, truth was imperative, and she 
answered ; — 

“ None at all.” 

“ How long a time do you generally give 
to it?” 

“Not — very — long,” she replied, honestly 
again, but with even less readiness and an un- 
comfortable recollection of the figures on those 
lists. “ Don’t you — O, Miss Hallock, don’t you 
think I had better give it up ? ” 

“I certainly do, if you cannot do any better 
than you have to-day.” 

“ I can’t.” 

“ That is not true. No one with your ability 
has the right to say ‘I can’t.’” Kitty opened 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


259 


her eyes. It was a new idea to her that she had 
ability. “But you give it neither time out of 
school nor attention in it. For the rest of the 
year I want both. You had better begin a gen- 
eral review. The chemistry teacher will help 
you. But there is something I regret more, Miss 
W are, than any of this — more even than your 
almost criminal thoughtlessness in the labora- 
tory ; something that I am afraid will have lasting 
effect upon your life, if you do not make up your 
mind to overcome it.” 

Kitty’s eyes asked what, as she revolved won- 
deringly what could possibly be worse than that 
day’s dreadful exposure. 

“That habit of yours of being always behind 
time. There was no particular reason this morn- 
ing? No, I thought not. I suspect there rarely 
is.” 

“ But I don’t think it was more than five min- 
utes. Lessons had not begun.” 

“ Perhaps not ; nor is it always the actual time 
lost. It is the habit. You are late at recitations, 
as well as in the morning, and, even in the past 
year, I can see how it has grown upon you. You 
are late a great deal oftener now than in Septem- 
ber. The few minutes may make no difference, 


260 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


as you say, but the habit is of vast importance 
and, unless you cure yourself, you will find your- 
self behindhand and getting into trouble all your 
life. And it might some day happen that you 
would have something to regret a whole life- 
time.” 

Kitty had never before had the serious side of 
her most annoying fault placed before her, though 
it was constantly putting the whole household 
to petty inconvenience. Even her mother was 
so used to it that she was hardly aware how the 
habit crept into everything, and was increasing 
day by day. Marion, to be sure, had often girded 
at it, but, then, she had a way of girding at most 
things Kitty did. 

Her teacher’s last words struck some chord. 
“Something to regret a whole life-time.” That 
was what mother had said. What but missing 
the appointment last Monday had really been at 
the root of her whole quarrel with her sister ? 

Miss Hallock was talking so earnestly, and so 
sweetly, too, that all of a sudden it came before 
Kitty in a new light. Much of her trouble that 
very day had been due to a lost five minutes. 
Like the beads mother had told about. A trivial 
neglect in one world, a cruel death in the other ; 


BLACK FRIDAY. 


261 


the undercurrent of thinking was going on all 
the time she was listening. 

“ People will never be able to depend on you, 
and it will be a constant source of annoyance, if 
nothing more, all your life,” Miss Hallock was 
saying. “ If you mean to conquer it, begin now. 
I want you to promise me not to be late again 
this year. But don’t promise unless you mean 
to keep it.” 

Generally Kitty made promises with the great- 
est readiness, and broke them with equal lack of 
thought. It was not so much that she was essen- 
tially an untruthful girl, as it was to save trouble, 
that small perversions came so readily to her 
tongue and deceptions into her actions. She had 
never aroused herself to the exertion of being 
alive. She did not feel willing to give this 
promise, and it was more to her credit than if 
she had been. 

“ You don’t want to? Very well. Then sup- 
pose you promise rne to try. You can do that?” 

“ I can’t.” 

“ You can. Will you ? ” 

“ Yes, I will try,” she answered, with sudden 
heartiness, and making up her mind that she 
would not leave school just yet. Then she did 


262 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

something that must have surprised her teacher 
very much, for all of a sudden she had put her 
arms around her neck and kissed her. 

“ Good-bye, my dearest Miss Hallock,” said 
she. 

It was nearly dark when Mrs. Ware, on her 
way to the kitchen, found Kitty by the dining- 
room fire, hugging her knees, her chin on a level 
with them, and her face flushed with looking into 
the glowing coals. 

“Why, I didn’t know you were at home,” said 
her mother. “ How quietly you must have come 
in. What are you thinking about — how long 
have you been here ? ” 

“ About five minutes,” answered Kitty, ab- 
sently. 

The author of “ Ecce Homo ” has said : “ There 
is no moral influence in the world, excepting that 
occasionally exerted by great men, comparable to 
that of a good teacher.” 


CHAPTER XII. 


A NEW CONVERT. 

The following Monday, Kitty astonished the 
household by rising before it was light; the time 
between then and breakfast being spent in wan- 
dering over the house like an unlaid spirit. 
Thus were the first stages of a reform ushered in, 
that were as violent as such beginnings are apt to 
be, and which seemed likely to work a radical 
change in the entire household. The clock was 
discovered to have been mysteriously pushed half 
an hour ahead, while the least relapse into falling 
behind was watched by Kitty with a vigilance 
that felt their timepiece’s failing was symbolical. 
Maggie was requested to awake her mornings 
when she came down — an order of things re- 
versed half the time by Kitty’s calling her at two 
or three o’clock, under the impression that their 
domestic was oversleeping herself. She caught 
cold by setting out for the train in such good 
season, that she had to wait half an hour outside 
263 


264 


FORCED ACiiUAINTANCES, 


the little station, that an eccentric-minded station- 
master never opened till the train was in sight, 
and tormented Maggie’s life out of her by ban- 
ishing Beauty to the kitchen, where, being used 
to her mistress’s endearments, the dear animal 
rubbed herself against the domestic’s ankles, 
playfully dug her claws into the skirts of her 
dress if she moved an inch, and when there was 
any bread or cake making going on, paraded the 
table and tried to jump bodily into the bowl. 
The reform was so sudden, so like a transforma- 
tion scene at the theatre, that the whole house- 
hold watched Kitty in amazement. 

Maggie briefly summed up her views to the 
range, on one of the mornings she had been sum- 
moned thither at some untimely hour, “Shure, 
Miss Kitty’s gone clean mad.” At any other 
time Marion would have jeered at the efforts, 
earnest but often taking a funny direction, and 
Kitty would probably have given up for good, 
after the first few spasmodic struggles. But be- 
sides that new-born feeling for her sister, she her- 
self, just up from a sick-bed, was showing the re- 
sults of some of its teachings. It looked as 
though the millennium had arrived as for a whole 
week Kitty was neither late to breakfast nor kept 


A NEW CONVElir. 


265 


the tea-table spread till Maggie, impatient for 
her gossip over the fence with the Eliot-Drew 
girl, felt indignant against the whole family, and 
put less care into her bread-making as an outlet 
for her wrath ; the Hibernian mode of reasoning, 
that, in larger cases, says, “ My grandfather was 
turned out of his cabin by his English landlord. 
Therefore, I will get some dynamite and blow up 
a few Americans.” And, then, sour, heavy 
bread would derange the digestion and temper of 
the household. 

The lion and the lamb laid down nightly, to- 
gether, without the customary squabbling as to 
which had the bigger share of the bed. Nor did 
Marion say a single sharp thing to anybody, and 
she even refrained from telling Arthur several 
amusing bits of gossip about their neighbors, 
though she did want dreadfully to relate about 
the girl whom Mrs. Eliot and Mrs. Drew had re- 
cently hired in common, neither being able to 
afford a whole domestic ; the half a one apiece 
had stirred up mischief, and they were not as 
good friends as formerly, for a too intimate ac- 
quaintance with the contents of our neighbor’s 
pantry and refrigerator is apt to be detrimental 
to friendship. Besides, they had clashed in this 


266 


FORCED A CQ UAINTA NCES. 


novel attempt in domestic economy, the unfortu- 
nate girl was kept flying from one house to the 
other, Mrs. Drew was constantly edifying Garrick 
Street by standing in her doorway and shrieking, 
“Ma — ry, Ma — ry,” just at the moment when 
her partner was employing the joint stock in 
beating eggs or frying pancakes. Both wanted 
their fires kindled at the same moment, both 
wished the girl to sleep at her house, and, if Mrs. 
Drew had an especially heavy baking or some 
spring cleaning or was expecting company, then 
was Mrs. Eliot certain to have the same plans. 
Co-operative help was not a success, and open 
rupture would have been the end had not ex- 
hausted Mary packed up at the close of the week, 
telling Maggie, in one of their too frequent con- 
ferences over the back fence, that no wages 
would induce her to remain with either lady. 
But each considered the other to blame. 

Marion did not pay much attention to “ Kitty’s 
freak,” except to laugh privately at each fresli 
development. Arthur looked at her once or 
twice speculatively, and took some amused in- 
terest in the new departure ; but he, too, said to 
himself, “It won’t last long.” But, to Mrs. 
Ware, there was a new light in the gray eyes. 


A JV.EIV COJ^FEBT. 


267 


and, although she too said nothing, Kitty found 
the way smoothed for her with more than one in- 
definite little touch, and there seemed an added 
tenderness in the good-night kiss. And what 
Mrs. Ware thought was, “It has come to stay. 
May I help her all that may be,” but said no 
more than the others, feeling that the time had 
not yet arrived. 

It was not alone that the reform showed itself 
in the struggle with that five minutes that she 
seemed to have lost on her entrance into the 
world, but in various directions that it entailed. 
So much time was spent in hunting for an article 
in her bureau drawers, by the usual method of 
stirring their contents till what she wanted came 
on top, that they were turned bottom upwards 
on the floor one afternoon and rearranged in the 
most model manner. The buttons were sewed on 
her boots to stay. Her pets were given their meals 
with a regard to time, ' that must have rejoiced 
the heart of Peep, to whom it was a marvel a 
life-time of irregular feeding had not given 
chronic dyspepsia ; while Beauty had no longer 
the excuse for her thieving propensities that a 
political economist might have found in hunger. 
And, mornings, she no longer, with lagging step, 


268 FORCED acquaintances. 

walked the broad path of pleasure, but briskly 
trod the straight and narrow way past the bake- 
shops and piano manufactories. 

Vouchsafing no explanation, she retired every 
afternoon, as soon as she got home, to one of the 
unused, upper chambers. There, with the cover 
of the refrigerator laid on top the baby-house for 
a table, and wrapping herself in an old army 
blanket, she struggled hour after hour and day 
after day. “ A dunce I was born and a dunce 1 
shall remain,” thought poor Kitty, in despair, as 
she contemplated the scanty pages with the many 
twin lines, crossing out blunders and vague be- 
ginnings, like miniature railroad tracks. “ If only 
I had Marion’s genius,” for to her, as to most, 
genius meant only inspiration, without connec- 
tion with hard work. She did not consider that 
her sister did not waste half the time looking out 
of the window in a reverie. Here, again, for the 
first time, she began to have an inkling of the 
harm the habit of day-dreaming did, not only in 
the time lost, but in the lax, nerveless condition 
of mind it engendered. She stifled with new res- 
olution the whisper, “Ask Marion,” and came 
down, with red nose and icy hands, only when the 
tea-bell rang. Unusual development in mental or 




269 


bodily stature in any one direction is usually ac- 
companied by general diminutiveness of the rest ; 
witness the large hands and feet of a dwarf. 
The minuteness of Kitty’s powers, with the one 
exception of her imagination, may thus have 
been accounted for. The composition was fin- 
ished at last, and Miss Hallock said, It would 
do, though not as good as usual.” 

Possibly, it was in part that so much nervous 
force had been expended in this effort that very 
soon after came a lull. Maggie’s midnight slum- 
bers were left in peace. Pin-cushions and 
brushes began to drop behind the bureau again, 
and then their owner would forget their where- 
abouts, and help herself freely from her sister’s 
stores, which entailed one or two lively battles ; 
for by this time Marion’s behavior was losing its 
first blush of heavenliness. Beauty was recalled 
from banishment, Arthur was requested to set 
the clock, and Gertie Meredith, who came out to 
spend the afternoon, was offered Peep, his mis- 
tress stating that, though she loved him to dis- 
traction, he was such a bother she wanted to get 
rid of him. The proffered gift was declined, 
Gertie, somewhat ungratefully stating, “that she 
should prefer a stuffed bird, as he would be less 


270 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

trouble to take care of, and would sing quite as 
much.” 

Meanwhile, the time for the next composition 
was drawing near, and Kitty was wavering in her 
good resolutions. When she had let her sister 
write her essays for the whole year, it was silly 
to be over-nice now. Try as she would, she 
could not produce as good a composition as did 
Marion without effort. And more than likely, 
if she did write it herself, it would get her into 
trouble again. Having unwarily stepped on the 
tread-mill, there seemed no way but to keep on 
stepping. Then, too, her conscience may have 
reached its normal state after its brief period of 
activity. When Gertie was out, she promised to 
meet her the next morning — her friend’s way to 
school was down the avenue, — stopped too long 
to talk and was late. Miss Hallock said nothing, 
but looked at her reproachfully, and Kitty was 
made thereby exceedingly uncomfortable ; but it 
was the last twinge conscience gave for some 
time. 

“ I wish you would give this to Grace Home,” 
said Mrs. Ware, that evening. “ It is the money 
for making my cloak over. I don't like to keep 
a woman waiting for her money, so you won’t 
forget ? ” 


A N^W COJVVIJliT. 271 

“ No, I won’t ; I’ll put it in my glass, where I’ll 
be sure to see it,” promised Kitty. 

But in the morning there was the old hurry, 
the comb went to keep company with the brush, 
the envelope went with it, and she set off for 
school without giving it a thought. There it lay 
for a number of days, unseen and forgotten, till 
Marion, sweeping the room, found it. 

“ How came you to forget giving that five dol- 
lars to Grace Home,” began Mrs. Ware, directly 
Kitty had entered the house. “I am so sorry. 
Mrs. Eliot was speaking of her only yesterday, 
and said she had had such a hard time getting 
along this cold winter. She has had to apply to 
the Charities for assistance. Mrs. Drew was 
speaking of me as one of those who owed her.” 
Mrs. Ware was thoroughly annoyed. 

Kitty stood dismayed. The miserable room and 
the cold, cheerless sick-chamber were before her. 

“I don’t know how long she may have been 
in actual need; she will never importune any- 
body.” 

“ I’ll go this minute.” 

“I sent Marion at once. Mrs. Home said it 
came hard to ask for charity, but her customers 
so often put her off.” 


272 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ But Grace has not been at school for three or 
four days,” began Kitty, in lame excuse, cut 
short by : — 

“No, because she had such a terrible cold, in 
consequence of their coal giving out; the man 
would not leave any without pay on the spot.” 

Kitty was silent. She had met Gertie Mere- 
dith every day that week, and had been late three 
times ; her problems in algebra had been copied, 
one of her teeth needed filling, to-morrow was 
Friday again, and she must perforce ask Marion 
to write her composition, because “I can’t do 
anything else. There isn’t time for me to write 
one now.” 

“ I like to see that independent spirit, and it is 
nearly always in a sailor’s wife,” added Mrs. 
Ware, her sympathy increased by the special cir- 
cumstances. “ You should not give a promise 
and let it slip so easily ; don’t give one unless you 
mean to keep it, come what may.” 

What Miss Hallock had repeated that very 
morning ; queer how they had a way of hitting 
on the same thing. 

“I’m so sorry. And they with nothing but 
a blue pump for dinner, and that dreadful sausage 
out in the yard.” Kitty was on the lounge in 


A COJVVJEBT. 


273 

a disconsolate heap. “O dear, what shall I 
do ? ” 

“ Don’t you really know ? ” 

“ Marion said, yesterday, that all I did was to 
eat candy and play with the cat.” 

“Not quite so bad as that, I hope.” 

“ It wouldn’t matter if it were. Look at Ma- 
rion herself now. Embroiders, writes, sketches, 
knows French and German, trims bonnets, makes 
the loveliest molasses candy, — seems as though 
every day she pulled a fresh piece of ribbon out 
of the hat. I thought that everybody had at 
least one talent. I must be the exception that 
proves the rule. Comforting for humanity, but 
hard on me.” 

“ The question is not how much one has, but 
how much one makes of what has been given.” 

“I have tried. But what difference does try- 
ing make ? ” 

“It makes all the difference that there is, or 
ever will be, in the world. Genius itself is often 
only striving.” Her mother had seated herself 
beside her. “ Did you think you could do it all 
in a minute ? ” She was stroking her head with 
a little tender gesture. Mother had understood, 
then. The trying had not all been thrown away. 


274 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


as, with a sudden glow at her heart, Kitty 
thought ; for the mere fact that somebody sympa- 
thizes in our struggles is such infinite help in the 
well-doing that is so hard to even the best of us. 
It came then in one little burst, the confidence 
for which the mother-heart had not waited in 
vain. 

“ It’s so hard, mother. I had no idea it was 
such hard work. You can’t let go a single 
minute.” 

“No, dear, not one. And the struggle ends 
only with life.” 

“Is it worth while? I was happier before.” 
Unconsciously Kitty had touched one of the great 
questions of humanity. Happy for her if the 
answer could always be as simple and direct as 
now. 

“Always and forever worth while. It is not 
the reward, for oftener than not there is none ; 
not even, as the moralists would have us believe, 
our own approval : for, having done our best, we 
torment ourselves with vain queries as to the 
wisdom of our course, and perhaps call it strained 
and Quixotic, and ask again and again, ‘ To what 
end?’ One object only can be kept in view: 
to do right because — wholly — it is right. You 


A COJVVUBT. 


275 ‘ 


were reading Chevy Chace the other day. Do 
you remember those lines — they express it ex- 
actly. They do not try to give reasons for good- 
ness : — 

“I’ll do the best that do I may, 

While I have power to stand ! ” 

“Yes, I remember, I understand.” 

She would tell mother that worst knot in her 
tangle. And then she blundered out somehow 
with the deception about the compositions, from 
beginning to end. Mrs. Ware looked more 
troubled than Kitty had ever seen her ; even last 
summer, when the first suspicions of their loss of 
fortune came to them, her face had not worn such 
a look. 

“ The deception has been going on all this year 
— O, Kitty, I would not have believed it of you ! ” 
“Yes, it’s dreadful, I know; and I’ve been 
praised so for what I never did. What shall I 
do ! I wish I were dead ! ” She had buried her 
face in her mother’s lap. 

“ I thought my daughters knew what honor 
meant. And that Marion should have assisted 
you in carrying out a system of forgery ! ” 

“ She helped me. How could I refuse, when — ” 
“ Stop ! Don’t add to the meanness. Marion 


276 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

was to blame, too, but the burden of the sin is 
yours. You must confess this to your teacher 
to-morrow morning.” 

“O, mother, I can’t. I’d rather do anything 
in the world than tell Miss Hallock. Don’t make 
me tell her ! ” Great as Kitty felt her fault to 
be, the punishment seemed out of proportion. 

“ She must be told.” 

And that the decision remained, in spite of 
tears and pleadings. 

“Won’t you write her a note, then?” begged 
the girl. 

“ Haven’t you the courage to bear the burden 
of your own fault ? ” 

“No, I haven’t,” owned Kitty, abjectly. “I’ll 
tell the chemistry teacher. She scolds twice as 
hard.” 

But there was no evading the issue, and she set 
off the next morning with red eyes and a load on 
her heart. It was not till the last minute that 
she mustered up courage to tell ; and after school, 
with the best grace she could, but hesitating 
often and with an embarrassment new to her, 
she succeeded in confessing the deceit. 

She was rather taken aback by finding that 
Miss Hallock seemed in no wise surprised ; latter 


A NEW CONVERT. 


277 


events had probably given her suspicions. She 
was perfectly kind, seeing that the girl was really 
penitent, but not at all inclined to condone the 
offence, and talked long and seriously with her. 

“I’m sorry — I’m really very sorry,” said Kitty, 
miserably, as she at last concluded. Perhaps, 
from the novelty of the emotion, her terms 
wherein to e.xpress penitence were as limited as 
are proper names in the vocabulary of the Ice- 
landers, who christen their children “ Pot,” “ Ket- 
tle,” “Pan.” 

“ I hope you are. I think you are,” said Miss 
Hallock. “When I see your compositions, let 
me feel sure.” 

That same week another stumbling-block was 
removed from her way. Gertie Meredith had 
serious trouble with her eyes, and was taken 
from school ; so one of the special temptations of 
the broad path no longer existed to lure Kitty 
into forgetfulness of a promise that, in spite of 
frequent backslidings and fits of despair, had 
truly been “ given to be kept.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 

“ Maggie is going to leave.” 

“ Leave ! What for ? ” Marion dropped her 
work in dismay as her mother entered the room 
with these words. 

“ The time has come, that is all,” replied Mrs. 
Ware, as one used to the instability of “help.” 
“ They feel the restless charm of the spring-time, 
and in all the kitchens of the land is the cry 
of ‘ Stage-coach ! ’ ” 

“ I thought she was as much a fixture as the 
chairs and tables. What has she taken such an 
idea into her head for ? ” 

“ She wants to be near her cousin.” 

“Tell him — of course it is a him — to come 
out here,” and Marion, after running her needle 
into her finger in protest, looked fierce enough 
over the wounded member and provoking Maggie 
to have frightened a regiment of Hibernian 
cousins. “Tell her she must stay. Don’t you 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 


279 


believe she would if you begged her to?” with 
rapid change of base. Mrs. Ware, wise in house- 
wifely matters, shook her head. 

“ She would be sure she owned the house then. 
I am sorry she is going, it takes so long to break 
a new girl in. But Maggie has made up her mind.” 

Nevertheless, Marion secretly entertained the 
hope that in consideration of her two years’ ser- 
vice and consequent presumable affection for the 
family, she might at the last moment relent. But 
no ; at the end of the week she packed up, and 
with her hair in a more astonishing braid than 
ever, and a ruffle that would have made Queen 
Elizabeth feel small, she took her departure. In 
the course of her reading, every name that had 
especially struck her had been added to her own, 
so that she had accumulated them like an en- 
dorsed note. She had left the cabin of her ances- 
tors as plain Maggie, but departed from the 
Wares trailing clouds of glory as Margaret Fran- 
ces Theresa Finnigan ; leaving behind half a loaf 
of stale bread, the unwashed breakfast-dishes, a 
dirty range, and, alas ! an empty kitchen, for the 
new girl was not coming for a day or two, and 
nothing could have kept the old one a moment 
longer from the arms of the mythical cousin. 


2S0 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

“We will get along as easily as we can,” said 
Mrs. Ware. “ You might get up and help me a 
little to-morrow morning, and we will make light 
work of breakfast between us.” 

“ O, no, nothing of the sort, mother,” returned 
Marion, decidedly. “ You have your morning nap, 
as you always do, and at half-past seven you may 
descend to a breakfast as nice as Maggie could 
have got up in her palmiest days. Kitty ^nd I 
will manage it all ; won’t we, Kitty ? ” with mis- 
chievous pleasure in dragging her sister into the 
morning’s plan. 

“ All I know about cooking is how to boil 
eggs ; but if my company would cheer you any, 
you can have it.” 

“Don’t attempt too much. Coffee and toast 
and Kitty’s eggs will be enough,” advised Mrs. 
Ware. “You had better let me see to the 
coffee.” 

“No, indeed; we shall get along splendidly. 
The only thing is to go to work intelligently. 
I’ve often wondered what Maggie could be about 
all the morning. W e will have steak such as 
you never saw, johnny-cake that Maggie could 
never even dream of, coffee that shall become a 
by-word, fried potatoes that would make Miss Par- 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 


281 


loa herself implore for lessons. Cooking is easy 
enough if you are only careful with measures and 
don’t take ‘ a pinch ’ of this and ‘ a little ’ of 
that.” 

“I am afraid I am one of the old-fashioned 
cooks who still pin faith on judgment and ‘ the 
feel’ as well.” Mrs. Ware smiled into her work 
but said no more. Only Kitty murmured: — 

“ Let her talk. She’s been writing to-day, and 
that always gives her an undue estimate of her 
own powers. If George Eliot will accept any 
assistance from me, I’ll be up with the lark.” 

Her idea of the lark’s rising hour must have 
been different from the commonly accepted one, 
for it was quite in vain the next morning that 
Marion tried to awake her. 

“ Never mind,” she thought, good-naturedly ; 
“ I’ll let her sleep till the fire’s made,” and shiv- 
ered down alone to the kitchen in the early light 
of a drizzly March morning. 

But the fire, that under the hands of the late 
lamented Margaret Frances Theresa had blazed 
up so quickly and cheerily, refused to do any- 
thing of the kind under her inexperienced ones. 
Seated Turk-fashion before the range, with ashes 
sprinkled with equal liberality over herself and 


282 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


the hearth, and as smudgy as though she had 
spent the night in the coal-bin, she tried every 
possible arrangement of the draughts, with equal 
futility, and was resting before trying to devise 
another, when an even voice from the doorway 
said : — 

“It takes a fool or a philosopher to make a 
fire,” and there stood Kitty in her school-dress, 
evidently laboring under the delusion that kind- 
ling fires and getting breakfast was mere pastime. 

“ I’m not a philosopher, so suppose you try 
your hand at it,” retorted Marion, sharply, with 
ill-temper that smoke and lack of success had 
begun. 

She herself was attired in a last summer’s print 
and big calico apron, with a black cap on her 
head, suggestive of the hangman’s victim. As 
she looked up from her labors, she gave this cap 
a wrathful pull over her eyebrows, which added 
the last touch to her appearance, and Kitty 
laughed. “ Couldn’t you find a recipe — the exact 
measure ? ” she drawled, provokingly. 

“If you’ve come down to be hateful, you’d 
better go back to bed again and sleep till noon, 
as I thought you meant to. If you haven’t even 
put on a clean collar and cuffs ! ” And Marion 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 


283 


brandished the poker, on which she had been 
resting from her labors, as thougjh she meant to 
attack her belated assistant ; but thrust it instead 
into the grate, and rattled it fiercely, preparatory 
to another trial of the draughts, that seemed con- 
structed for the purpose of blowing the fire out. 
“ How I hate Mr. Eliot ! I don’t believe there is 
another range like this old rattletibang in Sleepy 
Hollow. If you want to do anything, hunt up 
some newspapers — Heralds or Transcripts pre- 
ferred, there’s so much in them. I’ve burnt eight 
already. I think I’m going to have a splendid 
blaze, and then it all resolves itself into dust and 
ashes,” and Cinderella looked as though the same 
fate had overtaken all her friends, and she was 
laying their funeral pyre. But this attempt was 
crowned with success. 

“It’s the jokes in the Transcript^'’ said Kitty, 
sagely, who now looked more like a kitchen-maid 
— in a big calico apron, with sleeves rolled up, 
and the offending cuffs removed. 

“Now for the johnny-cake,” began Marion, 
briskly, her good-nature restored as she swept the 
ashes behind the coal-hod, to be taken up at a 
more convenient period. “It’s Mrs. Lincoln’s. 
Two eggs, — ” 


284 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“ There aren’t any eggs,” interrupted the assist- 
ant. “Mrs. Drew borrowed all there were last 
night. She came round the back way through 
the hole in the fence. She said she had company 
unexpectedly, and was evidently out foraging for 
them. I saw her go from Mrs. Eliot’s afterwards 
with a loaf of bread under her arm.” 

“ What a bother ! But we might have sour 
milk — ” 

“She borrowed the sour milk, too. I’m not 
clear as to what she wanted it for. Maybe her 
guests were Germans, with a passion for sour and 
indigestible stuff. She’s fond of picking up the 
Toms, Dicks, and Harrys of odd nationalities. 
I’d like to have heard their ‘ views ’ on the supper 
she set before them.” 

“The receipt says it isn’t as good, but sweet 
milk — ” 

“ I gave her that, too — all we had left from 
morning.” 

Now Marion had resolved not to lose her tem- 
per again ; but the strain on it was getting too 
much for any girl. Wrath on her brow, and with 
compressed lips, she still endeavored to hold the 
reins ; and to that end, marched from kitchen to 
closet, and from closet to ice-chest ; then back to 


DOMESTIC AFFAIBS. 


285 


the kitchen bearing a broken plate that she set 
down on the table, by which Kitty had seated 
herself, with an emphasis that broke the frag- 
ment in two. And then the smouldering fire 
blazed forth. 

“ Did she eat up the steak ? That pretty plate, 
too, in four pieces ! ” with an emphasis on the 
numeral, as though that were the worst part of 
the calamity. “ Kitty Ware ! if ever I ask you to 
do anything with me again. I’ll — I’ll be consid- 
erably older than I am now. You and Mrs. 
Drew together would create a worse famine than 
the locusts.” 

“ O yes. Beauty must have done that.” She 
was stroking her pet as she talked, as the cat 
took its constitutional up and down the table, 
now and then stopping to stretch herself — so as 
to hold more, Marion declared. “ I suppose I 
left the ice-chest open when I got the milk. Nice 
kitty ! ” 

It was too much for mortal patience. Without 
a word farther, Marion took the nice kitty by 
the nape of her neck and dropped her down 
cellar, then locked the door and put the key in 
her pocket. Beauty showed no sign of resent- 
ment ; if she had been dropped into the fire in- 


286 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


stead, she would still have placidly mewed, licked 
her paws, and planned fresh misdeeds. 

In three minutes she strolled in through the 
porch. Marion was wont to declare that she was 
a witch’s cat, and that the only way to keep her 
out of the room would be to hang a cross over 
the key-hole. The real explanation of her seem- 
ing omnipresence was the numberless cracks and 
holes in the cellar walls and windows. During 
the rest of the time before breakfast, she showed 
her customary forgiving spirit by rubbing herself 
against her enemy’s ankles, and purring gently in 
response to the “ Scats ! ” and “ Shoos ! ” with 
which she was showered. No matter in which 
direction Marion turned. Beauty was under her 
feet, ready to trip her up, till at last, worn out, 
she shut her up in the deep drawer in the closet ; 
Kitty came to the rescue, declaring her pet 
should not be suffocated before her eyes, and ac- 
cusing Marion of utter lack of heart. 

For the next half-hour neither girl spoke. 
Marion sawed at the half-loaf, which in this case 
was not better than no bread, till she cut her 
finger — for knives are always sharp enough for 
that, — gave up the attempt, responded amiably 
to her sister’s expressions of sympathy, and tried 
to think of something else. 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 287 

“ Biscuits,” suggested Kitty, on being appealed 
to. 

“They have to be set to rise the night be- 
fore.” 

“ Muffins. I like rice muffins.” 

“Don’t they have to be riz’d, too?” with 
symptoms of impatience. 

“We might have Graham muffins, then.” 

“ I think you’ll drive me crazy with your sug- 
gestions! Don’t you know anything, Kitty Ware, 
about the chemistry of bread-making ? ” 

“No, I don’t. Nor how illuminating gas is 
purified, either,” retorted Kitty, irrelevantly, and 
with such sudden animosity that Marion felt 
obliged to retort in kind. “ If you’ve got me 
up at this unearthly hour to put me through an 
examination in chemistry. I’ll go back to bed 
again.” 

Quarrel number three ensued ; its effects last- 
ing till the chief cook, in the midst of stirring up 
a concoction of her own invention, perceived that 
the water was at last boiling. 

“You run downstairs and grind the coffee. 
The coffee-mill is screwed on to the chimney — 
if Mrs. Drew hasn’t borrowed chimney and all.’* 
Once more she had reckoned without her host. 


288 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ Go down alone ? Not for worlds. Too many 
dreadful things have happened down cellar. 
When I build a house, it shall have neither attic 
nor cellar, and only one room, with no corners.” 

It was well for Mrs. Ware that her hopes of a 
sumptuous repast were gradually lowered by the 
phenomena evidently taking place in her usually 
well ordered kitchen. A great deal of talking, 
succeeded by intervals of silence, shrieks in every 
note of the scale, a clatter of dishes, much walk- 
ing to and fro, and a variety of burnt smells 
united into a stifling whole. At last a spasmodic 
ringing of the cracked bell announced that she 
might descend to steak that she certainly never 
saw, johnny-cake that if Maggie had ever dreamt 
of, it must have been in the nightmare ; coffee 
that was indeed destined to become a byword — 
and a reproach; potatoes the recipe of which 
no chef would have implored, unless even more 
demented than M. Miroboland ; and at either end 
of the festive board, fanning herself with a nap- 
kin, a hot and begrimed cook. 

“Good-morning. Yes, I’ve slept my headache 
off, thank you,” and Mrs. Ware began with edify- 
ing gravity to pour out the muddy coffee, that 
trickled reluctantly forth, as though ashamed of 


DOMESTIC AFFAIBS. 


289 


showing itself, politely accepted the burnt chips, 
did not inquire for the steak, and amiably tried 
to make the best of the coffee with plenty of 
cream. But when it came to the johnny-cake, 
burnt, heavy, and composed of equal parts of 
meal and saleratus, even motherly endurance 
gave out, and Mrs. Ware hastily swallowed a 
glass of water. 

“ Don’t try it, mother,” cried Marion, who had 
been keeping a watchful eye on her guest. “ It’s 
all a mess. Everything went wrong or it would 
have been as nice as I’d promised you. The fire 
wouldn’t burn, the kettle wouldn’t boil, till all of 
a sudden it began to boil so fast I thought it was 
going to blow up, the cat ate the steak, the 
johnny-cake burnt because Kitty would keep the 
two-tined fork I wanted to poke it with, to do 
algebra with on the slate table. I’ve burnt my 
hands, and I perfectly hate housework.” 

“ And it’s all Mrs. Drew’s fault ! ” 

The lugubriousness of her tone, the utter de- 
jection of her attitude, completed the work for 
Mrs. Ware’s composure, and she laughed till she 
could laugh no more, as she too pushed her plate 
away, and gave up the fiction of its being “all 
nice.” Kitty, and at last Marion, joined her. 


290 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


“ Throw it all to the hens,” said the latter, at 
last, wiping her eyes. “ They’ll like it, and 
maybe it won’t kill them ” ; so while the Bedou- 
ins of the back yard, with clucks and crows of 
rejoicing, enjoyed their unusual morning feast, 
the Wares breakfasted merrily, if unhygienically, 
on squash pie, cookies, and milk. 

The new girl came only as far as the gate, held 
up her hands, said “ Howly Moses, how forlorn ! ” 
and went away in search of livelier spots. The 
next one stayed till her afternoon out and did not 
return for two weeks, with a demand for pay for 
breaking the soup-tureen. It was the beginning 
of an era of ignorance, stupidity, and dishonesty, 
from Christine, a Swedish giantess, who was 
gifted with an abnormal appetite, eating every- 
thing she could lay her hands on, from pieces of 
lard and butter to tea-grounds, to Hattie Marie, a 
retired dress-maker, whose expressed predilections 
were for angel-cake and horse-back exercise. 

What a list it was, and how did the virtues of 
Maggie shine forth as girl after girl dawned on 
the scene, fresh from the cabins of old Ireland, 
with no knowledge of even how to build a fire, 
with brains that required the repeating of the 
simplest things countless times, to be rewarded 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, 


291 


on the next by a solid stare. What was the use 
of trying to remember their names ! They came 
and went, and the household was kept in a fer- 
ment; Mrs. Ware looked worried, Kitty poked 
suspiciously at her food, Arthur usually brought 
out a can of oysters, swung with democratic free- 
dom, guiltless of paper ; and Marion had frequent 
headaches, which she would not say a word about, 
and studied receipt books, and struggled to tell 
Mary pleasantly, that seventieth time seventh 
time, that the kerosene was not to be used to 
light the fire with, and the tea was to be made 
only with boiling water, and, if coffee was ordered 
for Dr. Ware at supper, to remind her gently it 
was not to be made in the tea-pot along with the 
tea, and to guard against the bean pot being set 
bodily in the middle of the table again by being 
on hand to prevent Dr. Dering’s witnessing that 
blunder of Annie the third. Only she did beg 
Arthur not to bring his friend out again till they 
had more reliable help. . , 

It was upon her that the greater part of the 
burden had fallen. 

“I acknowledge I know nothing about cook- 
ing,” she said. It was considerable for her to 
own it. “It’s a case of the blind leading the 


292 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


blind. But being in the kitchen always brings 
on one of your sick-headaches, mother ; so you 
show me and I’ll teach them, for if I’m ignorant, 
I’m quick and willing.” 

It was a time when the clothes came up look- 
ing as though the wash-tub had been one of the 
puddles in the back yard, or, according to the 
vagaries of their then handmaiden, gayly splashed 
with blue, or of such alarming whiteness that a 
pull rent them from top to bottom ; when hand- 
kerchiefs marked M. and K. were found in the 
possession of Bridgets and Noras, when collars 
were at a premium and the family, amongst them, 
could not muster a pair of cuffs that matched. 
When a frightful odor was ever present in the 
kitchen, the hens grew fat, the ashman staggered 
beneath the broken china privily concealed in the 
barrel, when a broken poker and a handleless 
spider testified that not even the synonym of 
strength, cast-iron, was proof against the Hiber- 
nian horde, whose ravages made those of the 
Goths and Vandals dwindle into nothingness ; for 
it was home gods that were destroyed, home 
temples that were invaded, and home comfort 
and order and peace that were recklessly — worse, 
indifferently — murdered. Job acquired his rep- 


DOMESTIC AFFAIBS, 


293 


utation far too cheaply. If an American woman 
had had a hand in the Bible she would have given 
other and far greater trials of patience. And she 
who passed unscathed would, indeed, have de- 
served a crown. 

There was no time now for Marion’s beloved 
writing, and her fingers were too stiff for playing 
or drawing, too rough for embroidery ; and how 
could she read, with the constant under-current 
of anxiety lest the potatoes should be sodden, or 
the steak burnt to a coal, if she were not on hand 
to superintend ? It seemed to have become a 
world of miserable, vexatious little worries, that 
were dwarfing her mind and adding trouble to 
trouble that anything so petty should have such 
power over it. Hardest of all, she would make 
light of the annoyances that beset her on every 
side, jest about the blunders she had hard work 
not to cry over, and never tell how tired she was 
when, after a morning’s unaccustomed work, she 
would run upstairs only in time to change her 
dress for dinner, saying never a word about the 
headache, that mother might not “ insist on going 
down herself.” 

Nor was it for mother alone that the good-will 
showed itself. In homely, small ways, yet it all 


294 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


went to help form the character, to add to the 
thoughtfulness for others that was getting to be 
the predominant trait of Marion Ware’s better 
self. For what did she knead, with tired arms, 
night after night, and peep with anxious care at 
the carefully tucked-up mass the first thing in 
the morning, but that Kitty might not be forced 
to eat the baker’s bread she disliked so much ? 
To be sure, she was often cross and uncertain, 
and her sister never knew it was all for her sake 
that tears were shed into that obstinate mass of 
dough, that “ only dynamite would raise.” She 
retracted her request to Arthur, told him to 
bring Dr. Dering out any time, and herself cooked 
the dinner, that her brother might in no wise be 
ashamed before the friend he regarded so highly ; 
while she tried not to mind her red face or the 
hands that were “ just like a cook’s.” 

But it was hardest of all in another way ; for 
the hot temper was put to never ceasing trials, 
while the twin-fault, pride, ranged itself against 
it, in the dignity that forbade any outburst to an 
inferior. Yet, when cherished ornaments were 
broken, the pretty china melted away, imperti- 
nence, waste, and untruthfulness were the order 
of the day, often and again shutting her lips tight 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 


295 


and walking out of the room was the only way 
to avoid losing her temper hopelessly. House- 
keeping and martyrdom were synonymous, while 
she grew to look upon him as the greatest of 
statesmen who recommended, as a cure-all for 
Erin’s afflictions, “ putting her ten minutes under 
water.” 

A homely school, and mean, sordid lessons. 
Yet perhaps, in all her after life, nothing stood 
Marion Ware in better stead than the mastery 
over self gained in those struggles in the little 
kitchen on Garrick Street. Long afterward she 
could see it. Then it seemed that she was be- 
coming a mere kitchen drudge, and — worst of 
all — tired and depressed, that she was losing all 
desire to be anything else; that ambition was 
stifled at its birth by the petty economy that 
counts its eggs and goes to bed worrying because 
that extra cup of sugar was used in to-day’s 
pudding. Some of this last, no doubt, was of 
a nature akin to the toast-rack and clothes-horse 
trouble; but more sprang from the care-taking 
and thought-having that were making her, all 
unknown to herself, more gentle and womanly 
every day. But those around noticed, even 
Kitty; and in the burnt cheeks and tired, dull 


296 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

eyes, another pair of eyes, behind blue glasses, 
began then to understand the loving nature that 
they indicated. 

“Look, mother, isn’t it dreadful?” she began 
one day, when Mrs. Ware, coming into the din- 
ing-room, found her sitting on the floor with a 
broken vase in her lap. It was the remaining 
one of the Egyptian pair. Eflie Faulkner, hap- 
pening in the last Sunday, had been invited to 
tea. In the animation induced by the presence 
of two young men, her witticisms had been more 
frequent than ever. An ill-aimed one had hit 
the one vase, and now the other was gone, too. 
“Found it with the broken part inside. Jane 
broke it, of course, though I haven’t dared ask 
her. Mother,” tragically, “if I did, I should fly 
out and be ashamed of myself ever after.” 

Mrs. Ware went to the kitchen and questioned. 

“ She broke it dusting — ‘ she just took it up, 
and it came to pieces in her hand,’ ” she said, as 
she came back. “We will try and have it 
mended, dear.” 

“ How can you do it, mother — be always so 
sweet and dignified ? I feel like flying to pieces 
fifty times a day,” glaring at a photograph of the 
Strawberry Girl with the big wondering eyes, 


DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 


297 


that told only of innocence and country lanes. “I 
don’t see how you do it. Were you always so?” 

“No, I was not; I used to have trouble with 
my servants when I was young and quick : but I 
soon made up my mind that whatever happened, 
I would never let myself be betrayed to words 
with a servant. Afterwards, when we kept three 
or four, I should have had endless trouble had I 
not so schooled myself.” 

“ It’s no use doing anything for them, they are 
so ungrateful, or trying to make their work easy ; 
for all the energies they have are bent to that end 
themselves. But I feel so dreadfully after I have 
let go. The passion is so short, and the repent- 
ance so disproportionately long.” 

“ Perhaps the next girl will be better.” 

“ If it were only some nice family servant who 
had been with us for years,” went on Marion, 
“like Elizabeth in ‘Mistress and Maid,’ or Hannah 
in ‘Little Women,’ one could put up with their 
vagaries. But these transient guests, who look 
upon us with an expression that says, ‘O, ye 
worms ! ’ are enough to wear out the patience of 
Griselda, make one of Mrs. Mulock’s heroines fly 
into a passion, and cause the Heir of Redcliffe 
and John Halifax, Gentleman, to swear.” 


298 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


The lane turned at last. One morning the 
butcher boy spoke with Marion; what he said 
was that he had a cousin who would come ; it 
scarce needs the universal claim of cousinship to 
make sure the Irish all belong to one family. 
Ever after there was something cherubic about 
his smile to Miss Ware. The cousin came the 
next day, a stout, smiling girl, with eyes of Irish 
blue, and willing heart and arms. She was 
respectful, she remembered all that was told her, 
she made delicious bread, she loved scrubbing for 
scrubbing’s sake, and, disdaining a mop, went 
daily down on her hands and knees and gave her- 
self to it with all the energy of soul and body. 

Their luck was so great there was sure to be 
some flaw in it. Besides, she was a new broom. 
Did not Maria, who began so well, in three days 
go to a ball wearing Marion’s best set of under- 
clothes and Kitty’s Roman sash ? Did not Katie, 
who was so respectful they were all charmed at 
the beginning of the week, become so impudent 
by the middle that she had to be dismissed on the 
spot ? And had not Maggie the Fourth, who was 
so neat she scrubbed the floor and every shelf in 
the closet the first two days, burn out her energy 
so unthriftily that on the third she washed the 


DOMESTIC AFFAIB8. 


299 


potatoes in the dish-water, and let willing Beauty 
lick the platters clean ? Not again would they 
rejoice only to have their hopes crushed to earth. 
But three days — the mystic period in which most 
had shown the cloven foot — passed, and Ann’s 
virtues increased, instead of diminished. Mrs. 
Ware ceased to look worried, and Marion hied 
blithely to the story that had been spinning itself 
in her head for so long. 

But alas for human hopes ! Hardly had this 
blessed peace brooded over the family a week 
when Ann fell sick. Arthur attended her, 
Marion and Mrs. Ware nursed her; but the ill- 
ness seemed likely to be one of long duration, and 
Dr. Ware procured her admittance to the hospital. 
Her place was taken by a stately maiden, the 
twin sister of Princess Marie Christine, who was 
gifted with a density of ignorance concerning 
kitchen affairs ^that royalty itself could not have 
equalled. 

One afternoon Marion was standing contem- 
plating four loaves of bread burnt to charcoal, in 
the apathy of despair, when the door opened, and 
who should walk in but Ann, of blessed memory. 

“I was out of the hospital last week,” she 
began, her curly hair flying, her blue eyes twink- 


300 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

ling, and the ready smile adorning her face. 
“ I’ve come back to stay if you’ll have me ; for 
sure I never lived with such good people. And 
how’s Miss Kitty ? ” 

“ Have you ! ” cried Marion, rapturously. “ I’d 
rather have you come than anybody I know. 
Don’t leave us again, Ann, ever — even for a 
day.” 

So the mythical servant was at last found ; for 
the days went on and Ann proved herself all that 
such could be ; uniting with the honest labor that 
whether in library or studio or kitchen is equally 
an honor to the heart and brain that dictates it, 
an affection for the family that not even Eliza- 
beth or Hannah could have surpassed, and 
refuting emphatically Marion’s assertion that 
ingratitude was the common attribute of all the 
daughters of Erin. 

The rule of “ Les Fain^auts ” was at an end, and 
through the rejoicing kingdom arose the paean, 
“ Health and a long reign to good Queen Ann ! ” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


ASPIKATIONS. 

Marion sat trying to solve one of the most 
curious phenomena of nature : why when one 
dress is cut piece for piece like another, it does 
not fit equally well. Before her stood Harriet, 
the dress-maker’s dummy, purchased after Kitty 
had fiatly refused to yield again to the persuasive 
voice, “ Slip this on just a minute,” to find herself 
in durance vile for a good hour. The front door 
opened. 

“If that’s Effie Faulkner, don’t let her up 
here,” said Marion, hastily ; for Miss Faulkner — 
being one who grasps effusively the proffered 
little finger of friendship — had lately developed 
a habit of dropping in without the formality of 
ringing — a practice trying to Miss Ware, who 
entertained ideas akin to an Englishman’s as to 
every man’s house being his castle. “ She shall 
not copy my spring suit on any account.’ 

But a voice was singing — chanting, rather — a 
301 


302 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

verse wherein no man could discern either sense 
or melody : — 

‘‘Sister Mary, quite contrary, 

She’ll neither lend nor borrow; 

I wonder would she lend the colored man a hoss, 

To ride all day to-morrow ? ” 

“It’s Arthur,” answered Kitty, from her van- 
tage-ground of the hall ; superfluously, for no 
other voice was capable of such a rendering of 
such a song. 

“ Hello ! gone into the wholesale rag business ? ” 
and he stood, a Colossus in eye-glasses, one foot 
at either end of the door-sill. 

But before there was time for greeting or 
answer, there was a diversion. The diversion 
rolled in between Colossus’s legs, nearly upsetting 
him, and made straight for Marion ; thence he 
rolled into every corner of the room,^ sniffing, 
poking, pawing, playfully seizing sections of 
skirts that had been placed over backs of chairs 
with anxious care, wobbling them in his paws to 
get at the bone inside, overturning Harriet, who 
upset easily, having been bought cheap on account 
of a rheumatic affection of her one leg, and wig- 
gling incessantly all over his little black body, 
like an enlarged pollywog. It was a Newfound- 


ASPIRATIONS. 303 

land puppy. Meanwhile, his owner had recovered 
his equilibrium. 

“Bulger,” he introduced, proudly. “My new 
dog. He is of the purest breed. I am training 
him.” 

“ It’s a pity you hadn’t got farther along in your 
training before you brought him out here,” said 
Marion, jumping upon the bed as the dog of pure 
breed rushed at her and mumbled her ankles 
as though to find out if she tasted like Harriet, 
The one thing of which she stood in fear was a 
dog; consequently, Bulger immediately jumped 
upon the bed after her, disregarding Kitty’s blan- 
dishments of “ Nice doggy, nice doggy.” With a 
pillow in each hand did Marion try to ward off 
her assailant ; but he, mistaking this for an effort 
to entertain him, seized and shook each one as it 
was offered him in turn, barked, wiggled more 
delightedly than ever, and, in the interims of the 
sport, darted at Marion’s ankles. Arthur, from 
the doorway, cheered on both combatants. Kitty 
laughed till she was tired, not ill pleased at the 
unusual spectacle of her sister frightened; and 
Peep, feeling called upon to add to the uproar, 
set up a deafening trill — a feat he accomplished 
twice a year. 


304 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

At last Bulger, suddenly wearying of the fun, 
darted off down the back stairs, where he accom- 
plished another noteworthy feat — he upset 
Beauty’s equanimity, and, no longer at her puff- 
ing, stretching gait, she flew out the back door 
like a cat who, springing from low antecedents, 
had not been hopelessly spoilt by luxury. For 
two weeks after, she refused to return to her 
usual haunts, but went into retreat under the 
big wardrobe, whence she was not to be enticed 
by any amount of reassuring words from her mis- 
tress. 

Quiet being again restored upstairs, Marion 
replaced Harriet, and with a sinking heart picked 
up the pieces of her dress, now as confused as 
those of a Chinese puzzle. 

“Where’s mother?” began Dr. Ware, when 
they were at last seated in the window. 

“Gone to a meeting of lights at Mrs. Eliot’s,, 
where men in petticoats and women in trousers 
tell indecent stories and call it taking a broad 
view. Mother thought she must accept for once,” 
said Marion, with asperity born of her late en- 
counter. 

“ I met old Dysart on the train. He was with 
two of them. He said, on parting, ‘ You come 


ASPIRATIONS. 


305 


and see me. And, Villum, you come, too.’ And 
laughed; they all laughed. Blessed if I could 
see what for,'’ said Dr. Ware, reflectively. 

“Those are the things they laugh at. Their 
idea of wit is on a par with Effie Faulkner’s. 
She was at a candy-scrape the other night, and 
confided to me afterward how quiet they were 
till she came and set things going. She did 
indeed set them going — to such effect that her 
hostess spent the next day scraping molasses off 
the chairs and picture-frames and carpets. Some 
even got into my hair.” 

“Doesn’t Duncan go to the meetings? I saw 
him just now standing motionless in the middle 
of his garden, arrayed in a dressing-gown and 
beaver. Does he go out there in the mild and 
balmy spring to solve the Everlasting Why ? ” 

“Nobody knows. It is one of the mysteries of 
Sleepy Hollow. He appeared there with the first 
pussy-willows, and we never go out but we see 
him in the centre of his quarter-acre, always so 
arrayed, always motionless. Perhaps he is trying 
to apply the principles of the Concord School to 
making vegetables grow in a gravel-bed.” 

A problem in which Rev. Mr. Duncan stood 
not alone, for there were attempts at coaxing 


306 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

something out of the soil in every garden in the 
Hollow: the mankind essaying vegetables; the 
womankind, flowers. Marion, and even Kitty, 
had not escaped the infection. The former had 
sowed seeds with a lavish hand, and set out a 
whole basketful of slips ; none of the seeds had 
come up, and the thrifty little plants had all died, 
save one small ivy that its owner watched with 
anxious care, covering it up every cool night with 
a newspaper ; toward the end of the summer it 
rewarded her, after three feet of stalk, with a leaf. 
Kitty bought a heliotrope of every pedlar tliat 
came along, — there were plenty of them, — but 
they all met with the fate of the Scriptural fig- 
tree. 

The only one of the amateur gardeners who 
could show any fruit of his labors was Mr. 
Dysart, who, having no other business than to 
devise pleasantries, worked early and late, and, de- 
voting himself to a specialty, made it the success 
one usually does make of that to which he gives 
all energy of mind and soul ; even when the 
mind is questionable and the soul problematical. 
His specialty was lettuce and cucumbers. All 
Sleepy Hollow naturally took an interest in them, 
they formed a topic of conversation with their 


ASPIRATIONS. 


307 


proud owner on every occasion, though they did 
not ripen till everybody was tired of both. Yet, 
despite this love and pride, neither were all that 
could be desired, for the lettuce refused to curl, 
and the cucumbers were in the shape of crescents, 
as though themselves convulsed with the agony 
they produced. 

“ And what has my little Kitty been doing ? ” 
began Arthur, after Marion had related some of 
the experiments in gardening. “How does her 
education progress? Come here, my dear, and 
I will prepare you for your final examination in 
chemistry.” 

“Don’t trouble yourself,” replied Kitty, strug- 
gling to escape from a too close brotherly em- 
brace, as Dr. Ware fumbled about her elbow for 
the “ crazy ” nerve — a favorite trick of his. 

“ What is the antidote for arsenic ? ” 

“ There isn’t any. It’s always fatal,” answered 
Kitty, with commendable promptness. 

“ There is, too. Now, then, what would you 
do if you swallowed a lot of arsenic?” 

“ Send for you,” descending to flattery. “ Ow! 
Let me go ! And you need not trouble to pre- 
pare me for my final examination.” If she had 
been alluding to her final end, there could not 


308 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

have been more solemnity in her tones. ‘‘ The 
preliminary hanging can be dispensed with, when 
one is to be drawn and quartered,” with which 
she withdrew from the company, partly to avoid 
farther discomfort of body and mind, partly to 
go in search of Bulger, who had made his way 
straight to a heart ever open to a new pet. 

She might retire fortnightly to that upper room 
to work with honest care over the composition, 
she might do her best with brain-wearying alge- 
bra, and struggle to remember those puzzling 
irregular verbs; but upon chemistry she could 
obtain no hold. It would always be a source of 
trial and mortification to her, but only to Gertie 
Meredith did she confide her fears of examina- 
tion. 

Arthur opened the budget in his turn. 

‘‘ Ned Keith has dropped law and gone into 
business with his father. He says he has no 
ambition, and could never make a lawyer ; but 
he’s going into business as though he meant it.” 

“ I’m glad. He’s such a nice fellow, if only he 
wouldn’t be wild.” 

“ Our private Medical Society met last night at 
the hospital. The uncle of one of the fellows 
owns one of the big quack medicine concerns ; 


ASPIRATIONS. 


809 


you’ve seen it advertised — ‘Pelham’s Pleasant 
Pills Pay the Purchaser.’ He’s going out of the 
business with a million, and wants his nephew to 
take it, and his nephew made me an offer to go 
in with him.” 

“O Arthur! Did you — have you?” ex- 
claimed Marion. 

“ I didn’t. I haven’t.” 

“ You could have made your fortune.” At the 
moment it seemed as though he had madly flung 
one away. 

“ Yes.” 

“ In five years.” 

“Yes.” 

“You could have gone out of it then. You 
could have gone abroad and done what you 
pleased. You could have had the practice you’ve 
always wanted. You would have been rich, and 
nothing does succeed like success ! Did you 
really think of it all? ” 

“ Would you have liked me to accept?” 

She stopped. The prospect was alluring. Her 
brother’s better fortunes meant the same to them. 
No more Sleepy Hollow economies, no making 
over of last year’s shabby spring dress, no trying 
to make one dollar do the work of five ; freedom 


310 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

from care, a plenitude of pretty dresses, a well 
appointed house — the old life back again, in 
short. And then, always ambitious for her clever 
brother, she had been more so than ever of late, 
in the better understanding her own aspirations 
had given her of what she knew his to be, silent 
though he was concerning them. Ambition and 
manhood and reticence that, by mere force of 
contrast, brought to her mind Mr. Dysart and his 
babble of lettuce and cucumbers. 

“And you refused?” A tinge of regret was 
in her voice, and it was that her brother an- 
swered rather than the words. There was a 
strain in his voice, too, — as of something hurt, — 
that Marion in her turn felt. 

“ I thought of mother and the rest. A doctor 
is rarely rich before middle life ; oftener not then, 
unless one of the big specialists. And it would 
only have been for five years, as you say, and 
then — ” The young man stopped, but his 
thoughts were not of pretty dresses or well 
appointed houses. “ Do you remember, in ‘ Elsie 
Venner,’ how Dr. Holmes describes the way a 
young doctor should start in? I thought of it 
all, and hesitated. But — yes, I did refuse.” 

“I’m glad you did. O, I’m glad!” cried 


ASPIBATIONS. 


311 


Marion, Iier eyes sparkling and her cheeks glow- 
ing. “ No, truly and honestly, I would not have 
had you, Arthur. The saddest character in all 
fiction, to me, is Lydgate, in Middlemarch. 
There’s no profession in the world like a doctor’s. 
I don’t wonder that when they want to bestow the 
highest possible dignity and honor upon a minis- 
ter, they dub him ‘doctor.’ Just as Molly Keith 
says: compare the medical with any other call- 
ing you please, and it comes out ahead in heart, 
intellect, and sound morality.” 

“ Did she say that ? ” and this time Marion did 
not feel that behind the words lay what had been 
the greatest temptation of all. 

“She said it the other day when she was telling 
me how you refused her father’s offer last summer 
of all the money you wanted for a start because 
you could help us by this place at the hospital- 
And you never even told us ! ” 

“Pelham offered Dering when I refused,” grat- 
ified, but refusing to show it otherwise than by a 
grunt. 

“Did he accept?” knowing well enough the 
question was superfluous. 

“ He told him that any man who took up with 
such rubbish was either a fool or a knave, and a 


312 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


fellow who had taken a regular degree and did it 
was considerable of both. Now, let’s hear what 
you’ve been writing.” 

From the first, Arthur had been much inter- 
ested in his sister’s literary attempts, and advised 
and criticised with a freedom that should have pro- 
duced the most gratifying results, even though 
the authoress continued to present a melancholy 
and tragic view of life, occasionally rebelled 
against having her personations and descriptions 
restricted, the number of lunatics cut down to 
one or two, the thrilling incidents modified, and 
the love scenes remorselessly ridiculed. People 
did not die of broken hearts, it took more than 
being jilted by a girl to make a fellow lose his 
appetite, a man was a duffer who gave up hope 
and ambition or cleared out to India because he 
could not marry the woman he’d like to, so many 
exclamation points were superfluous, and she’d 
-better “drop the Aunt Janet business” (on the 
fifth maiden relative of that name appearing on 
the scene ; it was a peculiarity of the authoress 
that, once having found a fitting name for one of 
a certain character genus, all of the genus hence- 
forth bore the same cognomen). Merciless criti- 
cism was it, and more than once did the writer’s 


ASPIBATIONS. 


813 


temper flame up ; but Arthur was the one person 
on earth whose opinion she regarded as final, and 
whose literary judgment as above reproach; so, 
however she might scoff at the time, insensibly 
much of the crudity and exuberance of her writ- 
ing was trained away by those afternoons in the 
big window. 

For a while after the first story appeared she 
was successful — perhaps unusually so, and, for- 
getting the attendant trials and mortifications of 
her initiation, began to think that the difficulties 
attending authorship were exaggerated. A fairy 
story found favor with the editor of a religious 
weekly, who furthermore expressed himself as 
willing to accept short moral tales ; the editor of 
the paper that had published the first story took 
several others, and all of these were paid for. 
The delightful hope of being eventually the 
mainstay of the family did not look so very 
chimerical, after all. 

But after this Fortune not only ceased smiling 
but began to frown. The sensational story-paper 
began copying from English periodicals ; the re- 
ligious weekly changed hands, and the new editor 
— a clergyman — showed a perverted taste in 
preferring his own sermons to Miss Ware’s in- 


314 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


structive tales. A story upon which she had be- 
stowed especial thought and care, and, in the ex- 
hilaration of success, had ventured to send to a 
magazine of high standing, was heard from no 
more. With all these disappointments, she grew 
despondent again, laid aside the big ink-bottle 
and stubby pen, and, spring cleaning being then 
the order of the day, found an outlet for her 
pent-up energies in making over a carpet and in 
keeping their room so immaculate that Kitty felt 
compelled to hide some of her possessions, after 
her sister had scrubbed out a corner of her look- 
ing-glass and broken a little Parian pitcher in her 
efforts to cleanse it of a minute dirt spot. 

But Marion missed writing. Giving it up was 
not easy, for ink is the most intoxicating of all 
liquors. Then, every story that came into her 
hands seemed w^eak and poor. Perhaps they 
really were ; perhaps, it was again envy stirring 
its ugly head, though its object was so far off that 
she would indignantly have denied it as that. 

“It’s just as that horrid guerilla said,” she 
thought. “ It’s the name and not the quality of 
the work. What would Arthur say to a story of 
mine where the heroine, by actual count, ‘burst 
into a passion of tears ’ seven times in one num- 


ASPIRATIONS. 


315 


ber and on the eighth is joined by her husband? 
Yet I have no doubt the authoress was paid 
thousands for this trash.” 

It was while these thoughts were strong upon 
her that one day she came across an earnest little 
poem of Phoebe Cary’s. 

Take this for granted, once for all, 

There is neither chance nor fate. 

And to sit and wait till tl^ skies shall fall, 

Is to wait as the foolish wait. 

The laurel longed for, you must earn. 

It is not of the things men lend; — 

And though the lesson be hard to leam, 

Tlie sooner the better, my friend. 

That another’s head can have your crown 
Is a judgment all untrue ; 

And to pull this man or the other down 
Does not in the least raise you. 

No light that through the ages shines 
To worthless work belongs. 

Men dig in thoughts as they dig in mines 
For the jewels of their songs. 

Hold not the world as in debt to you 
When it credits you day by day 

With the light and air, with the sun and dew, 

And all that cheers your way. 

And you in turn, as an honest man, 

Are bound, you will understand, 

To give back either the best you can, 

Or die and be out of hand. 


316 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

A printed word has sometimes the force of a 
spoken one. The verses seemed to Marion a voice 
answering her doubts, and, while it told of the dif- 
ficulties before her, bidding her be of good cheer. 

“ I’ve been a conceited fool,” she thought, 
“ expecting to jump to the top instead of crawl- 
ing. I will keep on and I won’t look for pay 
yet. There’s no reason I should not serve as 
long an apprenticeship as Arthur did. But en- 
ergy I have ; patience I will have.” 

It was only the next day, as though to encour- 
age her resolution, that something delightful 
happened; though this time she did have the 
good-sense to realize that it would not do to 
augur too much from it. The story she had 
given up as lost came back to her, not in MS., 
but printed, and the accompanying envelope held 
two pieces of paper. One read, briefly : — 

“We send you a copy of ‘A Mental Masque- 
rade,’ contained in the present number of our 
magazine. And we shall always be glad to 
receive stories from you as bright and carefully 
written as this.” 

Sweeter were the words to her than those on 
the other long, narrow paper, though it was a 
check for sixty dollars. 


CHAPTER XV. 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 

“ Where’s the rake ? ” 

“ Haven’t seen it.” 

“I don’t wonder you’re afraid of the dark, 
when you tell such stories. I’ve looked in the 
porch and it isn’t there,” for Kitty’s rendering of 
the good old maxim was to make that a place for 
everything. “ Perhaps you never had my gloves, 
either?” 

“ O yes, I remember that, because it was the 
day the postman brought your last story back.” 

“And it was the day after you found you 
hadn’t passed in chemistry,” retorted Marion. 

This application of mnemonics was enough, of 
course, to cause Kitty to say, mildly, yet with 
emphasis : — 

“ If you have come up here to talk to me about 
rakes and gloves, you had better go down again. 
The weeds are growing nicely in my garden, and 
I would not disturb them for the world. If any- 
317 


318 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

thing can grow there, it shall. I should feel it 
would be the same to pull it up as though I 
should discover my talent and somebody should 
go to work to root it out. And, really, I should 
not think the ivy would require more than three 
hours’ attention.” 

Vacation had come at last, and she was feeling 
that she had really earned it for once. To be 
sure, there was the unhappy fact alluded to, — - 
that she had been conditioned in chemistry, — 
but, to her own surprise, she had passed very 
well in everything else ; Miss Hallock had com- 
mended her efforts and had said good-bye very 
sweetly, and the chemistry teacher was especially 
amiable at parting, and gave her some advice 
about “making up.” “It isn’t genuine, though,” 
reflected Kitty ; “ the interest she feels is only of 
a spurious kind, as toward a brand snatched from 
the burning.” 

She left school feeling that it behooved her to 
make special struggle against the temptations of 
vacation ; though in a great measure free from 
work for two happy months, she would not allow 
herself to get demoralized. She offered to share 
with Marion the dish-washing and dusting and 
bed-making, and — perhaps the greatest sacrifice 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


819 


she could have made — begged her brother to 
hear her lessons and give her weekly instruction 
in chemistry. He was likely to prove a good 
teacher, for he was very patient, and made sure 
she understood one thing before going on to 
another. Moreover, the pupil made the most 
strenuous efforts to keep her attention fixed on 
the lesson, in ever-present fear that the doctor 
should discover that softening of the brain had 
set in. 

Nor had it ended here. Full of her heroic pur- 
pose, she proposed, as her volunteer holiday task, 
to learn to cook. Marion was to instruct her, 
and began with the patience acquired in teaching 
the succession of Irish girls. Kitty, on her side, 
was much interested, and wished to begin with 
cream cakes. At the end of a week, both interest 
and patience were exhausted. She was worse 
than the worst Irish girl they had had, the ex- 
hausted teacher declared. She did not want to 
learn to cook, the weary pupil asserted ; she had 
rather starve. 

It had been of no use to instruct her in the 
niceties of cake-making, the careful mixing and 
the moderate oven that would insure fineness and 
evenness, to go over and over again the steps of 


320 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


a simple pudding. Marion adopted the method 
of showing her once, of superintending every 
part the second time, and the third, repeating the 
instructions, would leave her to her own devices ; 
on which occasion, the sitting-room door would 
be opened an hour later, a floury, dishevelled 
figure appear, and some such dialogue follow: — 

“This receipt isn’t explicit enough. It says 
a spoonful of saleratus. Where do you put it?” 

“Put it? Put it in the bank!” said the 
sorely tried teacher, interrupted in the middle 
of a love-scene. “What have you been doing 
all this time ! Kitty,” with sudden foreboding, 
“ where have you been beating those eggs ? ” 

“In the tin dipper. And they would not 
froth. I knew they would not” — her power of 
forecasting was carried into her culinary achieve- 
ments ; — “ and the chocolate frosting looks like 
mud. I poured it over the cake, same as you did, 
and it’s run over the pan and table and floor ; the 
kitchen is flooded with chocolate frosting. The 
cake is nothing but two crusts ; I don’t see what 
has become of the inside. Guess you had better 
come out and take a look.” 

Saturday night saw the end of her studies in 
this direction. Farther aspirations were buried 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 321 

in the bean-pot. She wished to see to the beans 
unaided, if Marion would just tell her; Ann was 
not even to look into the oven. She would re- 
trieve her blunders by a brilliant success. Sup- 
per time came — no, she would lift out the pot 
herself; and the horrified cook rattled out two 
quarts of well parched beans, to recall that the 
instructions had said something about soaking 
and parboiling and adding water at intervals. 

Yet, with it all, she was so much in earnest. 
The eggs that never frothed were beaten till her 
arm was ready to drop off ; the custard that was 
always lumpy stirred till her face was hot and 
red ; the gingerbread that was so sure to be burnt 
had been watched with an Argus eye. She 
seemed fairly to go out of her way to make 
blunders, to take the wrong thing when the right 
one was nearer at hand; there was actual in^ 
genuity in the manner she would contrive to 
leave the essential thing undone. 

“ I don’t see myself how I do it,” she said, the 
following Sunday. “ The only explanation I can 
think of is that Robin Goodfellow is about.” 

“ Are you sure you aren’t in the middle of a 
dream when you leave the sugar out of the cake 
and the apple out of the pie ? ” 


322 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“I’m thinking so hard it seems as though I 
should have nervous prostration. I won’t try 
any more just yet ; not till I’ve made my dress, 
any way.” 

Her mother could not say her nay. She had 
favored the plan, but there had been a long list 
of articles broken, the grocer’s bill had increased 
alarmingly, and there had been nothing to show 
for it. 

After all, sewing was better adapted for hot 
weather than cooking. Marion, to whom that 
sixty dollars was an inexhaustible gold-mine, had 
just given her a new dress, as a silent peace-ofPer- 
ing for having told her she was stupider than 
Marie Christine’s double. She refused her sister’s 
kindly offef’ to cut it out, her mother’s wish to 
show her. It was easy enough ; only to pin the 
pattern on to the goods and cut. This easy work 
took her four days. On the fifth she dawned 
upon her family with a tragic, — 

“Look!” 

Upside down, hind side before, was the waist ; 
it failed to meet within three inches till it reached 
the waist, when, to atone, it lapped six. One 
sleeve went up, the other curved backward, and 
the right was wrong side out, both having been 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


323 


cut for one arm. The skirt hitched here and 
there, was well up to her knees in front, and had 
a train behind. 

“ What does ail it ? ” demanded the apparition, 
clutching the superfluity at the waist with one 
hand, and with the other holding up the train, 
that had a tendency to skew around to the left. 

“What — doesn’t ! ” gasped Marion. “ I should 
think even Harriet would be in convulsions.” 

“ I shall be, if somebody doesn’t help me.” 

“ Take it off and put it away for to-day,” ad- 
vised Mrs. Ware, when she could speak. “You 
can do it better to-morrow ; then we will rip it 
apart and look it over together,” which resolved 
itself into her doing the work, to all effects and 
purposes, for Kitty proved as incapable with 
scissors and needles as she had been with bowl 
and spoon. If she were left alone, even with 
careful basting and minute instructions, it availed 
nothing ; the work had to be taken apart on in- 
spection. And again was the same boundless 
fertility of resource in making blunders. Mrs. 
Ware was patient beyond words, and Kitty was 
again trying her honest best. But: — 

“ It’s like that hateful question in arithmetic,” 
she said, one day, despairingly. “ The snail is at 


324 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the bottom of a well. He crawls up four feet 
every day to fall back three at night. Do you 
think I shall ever reach the top ? ” 

Whether she would have is problematic, had 
not her mother, at last, watched every stitch. 

“ I never did think I was a fool,” she said, in 
one of these afternoon lessons; “maybe because 
I never tried to do anything before that would de- 
monstrate the fact. People don’t seem to think 
me stupid when they talk to me.” 

“ You could not expect to grasp it all at once. 
Ability to do even seemingly easy things well 
comes only with practice. The lightest hand at 
souffld means long, heavy, wearisome stirring of 
many ingredients.” 

“ It tends to confirm me in my impression that 
the trouble with me is genius. Genius, proverbi- 
ally, has its head in the clouds and its foot in the 
matter in hand.” 

“ I won’t hear genius talked about as though it 
were sublimated stupidity,” protested Marion. 
“ I never will believe that inability to do common 
things argues ability to do uncommon. If 
George Eliot gave her mind to it, she would 
make as good a cook as Miss Parloa, and Char- 
lotte Bronte’s gift would only have made her the 
better housekeeper.” 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


325 


The dress was finished at last, leaving the sew- 
ing-mistress as worn out as the cooking teacher. 
Only Arthur’s sturdy manhood seemed equal to 
the nervous strain attendant on the post of in- 
structor to Kitty. Mrs. Ware proposed going on 
with something simple, but Kitty thought she 
would wait awhile. A little spasmodic gardening 
had followed, but, in the interval of cooking and 
sewing, the weeds had had a chance, the last 
heliotrope was choked, and that morning she 
had found a crop of toadstools, which was such a 
mockery of her hopes that she turned short 
around and gave up gardening, likewise, as futile. 

“Maybe it’s the evil eye,” she suggested to 
Marion. 

“ Then I wish you’d take a walk through Mrs. 
Drew’s garden. She has the hoe, too, hasn’t 
she?” Later, the rake was also found missing. 
Hence the quest into the house after her sister. 
The search was not long — on the lounge, of 
course, in the cool, curtained window, so com- 
fortable that to be called upon for any farther 
exertion, mental or physical, was to expect too 
much of good resolutions that had suffered such 
wear and tear. Marion decided to yield grace- 
fully to circumstances. 


326 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“I don’t believe I’ll do any more gardening 
just yet, either,” she said. “ The mosquitoes are 
so thick out there, too. It’s some consolation that 
the Eliots’ house is nearer the swamp than ours.” 

“ Maybe they’ll eat him up, like Bishop Hatto 
and the mice,” suggested Kitty. 

“If it’s the same to them, I’d rather they ate 
Mr. Dysart. He’s been shouting to me over the 
fence about his old vegetables. As for Mr. 
Duncan, I’m not sure but what, in this blazing 
sun, the fate of Casabianca will be his.” 

“ It’s the only way his light will shine before 
men. I should like to hide that of his son under 
a bushel — the biggest bushel I could find, not 
village measure,” continued Kitty, who disliked, 
with a virulence unusual to her, that offspring of 
Philosophy. 

“Like Mr. Duncan, I have been digging in 
thought as well as dirt.” 

“ I hope the one has proved more fruitful than 
the other.” 

“ This is the time when we have always been 
making ready for the mountains. The Merediths 
are off to their sea-shore place, the Keiths go to- 
morrow, and there is such a left-out feeling. Be- 
sides, have you ever thought how much smaller 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


327 


our circle of friends is now than last year? 
People whom we would have thought incapable 
of such a thing have grown so cool and distant I 
hardly know them. They bow when they used 
to stop and speak, and stop for a word or two 
when ten minutes was not long enough formerly. 
If I came into a fortune, the first thing I should 
do would be to give a big party and leave out 
every person who has shown it was our money 
and not we that he cared for. I use ‘ he ’ in 
deference to the rules of grammar ; it is in- 
variably ‘she.’ The objection to my plan would 
be that there would not be six people left to 
invite.” 

Yet in this statement, much of it true, Marion 
overlooked two things, both of which might have 
alleviated her pain at the discovery of an unpleas- 
ant trait of human nature. One was that she 
herself was partly to blame for it. The feeling 
that had led her to decline invitations had natu- 
rally in many instances been misinterpreted. An 
uneasy pride that looks for small slights and 
offences is not long in finding them. She saw 
rudeness where none was intended, would con- 
strue a hurried bow into a deliberate cut, and 
fancy"* people unkind when they were only 


328 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


thoughtless. The other consolation might hav^ 
been — unconsciously was — that while losing 
some friends, she was beginning to find one in 
her sister. She said to herself, in occasional 
wonder, that she was actually enjoying Kitty’s 
company, that she was eager to tell her bits of 
news, that she was even understood when she 
talked to her as she did to Arthur — she would 
say, “Kitty has changed, Kitty takes so much 
more interest in things than she used,” and it 
was true ; only it was not the whole truth. 

Nor was it long ago that it would have been 
impossible for Kitty to reply as she did. 

“ Yes, I have noticed and felt it, too ; but I 
hated so to acknowledge that there was a differ- 
ence. There is Lulu, now. A year ago she was 
my dearest friend; I was with her a great deal 
more than I w'as with Gertie. I have not seen 
her — to speak to — but once since the Merediths’ 
party, and when I met her on the way to school, 
she just bowed coolly, and once she did not bow 
at all, though I know she saw me. Gertie said, 
the next time, ‘You just cut her.’ But I did not. 
It would not have been well-bred, and I prefer to 
remember that I am a lady, even if she forgets 
that she is.’’ 


WBO SEEKS, FIKES. 


329 


I’m sorry for myself, too. Before, when peo- 
ple were nice, I took their friendship and was 
glad. Now I’m as suspicious as any old misan- 
thrope,- and think everybody has some motive for 
a proffered hand.'’ 

“ If we have lost some whom we thought were 
our good friends, we know now who our true 
ones are, and that helps to make matters square,” 
for Kitty sometimes took a calm, common-sense 
view of a situation against which Marion’s quick 
pride cried out. 

“ I like to take people on trust. I can’t now.” 

“There’s Mr. Keith. No one can be kinder 
than he, advising mother in business matters. 
Molly has been lovely. It was so sweet of her to 
ask you in last winter to embroider her curtains 
and to put it so prettily, just when the opera was 
here. Gertie asked me to come in to luncheon 
any time, and looked ready to bite her tongue off 
when she let out about Lulu’s birthday party 
that she hadn’t asked me to. Another mean 
thing that girl did was to peep into the Mere- 
diths’ Bible to find out how old Lucy was.” 

“What a horrid little sneak! How old is 
she?” 

“I don’t know. When I asked her, she said 


330 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


the page was torn out, and now she tells every- 
body that Lucy did it.” 

But, in spite of these cheering thoughts of the 
friends who were stanch, Marion’s heart was 
sore in thinking of those who were not ; for she 
herself would have been yet more loyal in adver- 
sity than prosperity, and it is so hard to lose 
the boundless faith in people that unconsciously 
does much toward making life pleasant to the 
young. 

Then the insight into character that comes, of 
necessity, from writing, be it ever so humbly, 
aided the growing distrust, and increased the ten- 
dency to ridicule small failings, that was always 
such a temptation to her. It was a pity, but she 
was fast getting into the way of looking only for 
the poorer, weaker, and the more amusing side of 
people. The books she read at this time were 
Byron and Rochefoucauld — a style directly oppo- 
site to the open, manly one she had hitherto pre- 
ferred. 

Though poverty and the deeper experiences of 
life would make her stronger and more helpful, 
it had become an even chance whether the trans- 
formation would result in her mother’s sweet, 
serene womanhood, or, by warping and distorting 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


331 

her nature, make her, to all save the few whom 
she took to her heart, that saddest failure — an 
intellectual woman, who is also sharp, bitter, 
satirical, seeing and dwelling only on the poorer 
side of human nature. 

It took more than the thermometer at ninety, 
and a disposition to go on rising, to quench her 
energy. Foiled in one direction, it presently 
broke out in another. 

“Kitty!” 

“What?” 

“ I have an idea.” 

“I have not, and I shall not have till it is 
cooler.” 

“ Let’s fix up our room. I’m ashamed of it.” 

“ I should like to. Those staring prison walls 
make me think, whenever I wake up, that I am 
Mary Queen of Scots, with my head to be 
chopped off in the morning. You don’t know 
what I suffer being other people.” 

“We can get paper cheap and put it on our- 
selves. I’ve ten dollars left, and we must make 
that do. It won’t be like Molly Keith’s room ; 
but we will get some cretonne and cover all the 
furniture, and, with curtains and a mantle lambre- 
quin, it will look less like barracks. Come up- 


332 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

stairs and see if we can’t pick out some things 
from the lumber-room.” 

Up they ran, Kitty as much interested in the 
new project as her sister. The first thing their 
eyes fell on was the missing rake. 

“ O yes, I remember now,” as Marion looked 
triumphant. “ I took it up to fish my hat out of 
the apple-tree. Look here,” and she caught up 
on it a pair of gloves, that had rolled out of a 
discarded sacque of her sister’s, thereby nipping 
in the bud the “ I told you so.” That squared 
matters, a laugh cleared the air, and the two fell 
to work rummaging with a good will, that would 
have driven Mrs. Ware’s order-loving soul dis- 
tracted. 

“This will make a lovely sofa,” and Marion 
tugged at an old-fashioned settle. “ Like one of 
those in Punch, all cushioned and two big pillows 
at the back. Amanda and her expressman used 
to sit on it evenings, in the laundry ; don’t you 
remember? Here, take down the hair from the 
nursery sofa, too.” 

“ My part in the enterprise seems to have re- 
solved itself into that of a beast of burden. I 
thought we were to be free and equal members of 
a branch Decorative Art Society.” 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


333 


“I’d found one if I could,” as she emerged 
from the oak chest. “It is the truest charity 
that has been founded this many a long day, not 
only in that it helps people to help themselves, 
but reaches a class outside the aid of any recog- 
nized charity. If I were rich — ” 

“If I were rich,” interrupted Kitty, thought- 
fully, “I should have a maid. It is the article 
of luxury that symbolizes wealth to me. Some- 
body to do up my hair and run errands.” 

“I should have a dog-cart. I don’t care if 
ladies don’t drive them ; they are so nice and high 
up, I could realize my elevation over the foot- 
travellers on the dusty high-road. And the other 
thing I should do,” with an earnestness that made 
her for the moment almost pretty, “ the charity to 
which I should give my time and money should 
be helping girls. Not those in actual bread-and- 
butter need, but in the boots-and-gloves need. 
Dr. Dering was talking last Sunday afternoon 
about his charity. It was to be helping clever 
young fellows to be doctors and lawyers. If a 
man wants to be a clergyman, there is enough 
help proffered — which is doubtless one reason 
why the majority of ministers are third-rate men.” 

“ Mr. Duncan was helped through.” 


334 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

“ It goes without saying. At the last meeting 
of the Literary Society he was making his boast : 
‘Ah, the Jordan — beautiful, sublime! I went 
into it — went way in — went in farther than 
Jesus I ’ It was typical not only of him but of 
a good many other clergyman and church people 
— that they have got a little ahead of Jesus. 
There, this muslin will be just the thing for our 
bureaus.” 

Nobly, this time, was the ardor sustained with 
which Kitty began. With a g2ij bandanna over 
her head, she threw herself heart and soul into 
the work. Superb was the energy in which, in 
those hot summer days she so hated, she drove 
nails ; untiring the devotion she displayed for the 
big needle, and it would have drawn tribute tears 
from the most hard-hearted to witness the silent 
heroism with which she stabbed her fingers and 
scratched her nose, — for a needle, in her hands, 
had a trick of flying up at that feature, — 
pounded her nails, and coughed and sneezed as 
she stuffed chairs into the semblance of fat pin- 
cushions ; while Marion, attired in a pink pina- 
fore, mounted the step-ladder, and pasted on roll 
after roll of yellow roses on a brown ground. 
Mrs. Ware was respectfully requested to keep out 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


335 


of the room till it should burst upon her in com- 
pleted glory, but not even that prospect was as 
pleasing to her as the sound of her girls’ friendly 
chatter through the half-closed door. 

It was to be expected that now and then their 
tastes would run tilt. Kitty wanted a brown 
wall-paper, and declared she would not sleep be- 
tween four walls that had on them pink roses, or 
pink in any shape — even the scarlet flannel 
border of the rug beside the bed should not be 
pinked with her consent ; the bear-skin rug was 
Arthur’s donation and gave an air to the whole 
room. Marion wished to realize her treasured 
vision as to pink furnishing ; the controversy was 
finally settled by the substitution of pale yellow. 
Again, had Kitty been allowed to work her un- 
restrained will, she would have converted every 
chair in the room to an easy chair, by upholstery 
and sawing off three inches from the front and 
six from the back legs ; but Marion put an end to 
this wholesale manipulation of the saw by her 
indignation at finding her own straight-backed, 
cane-seated favorite had been so treated in her 
absence, and said it made them look like camelo- 
pards. 

But she watched Kitty in amazement. The 


33G 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


walls, the curtains that matched them so exactly, 
she undertook herself, but farther than that she 
yielded the palm. Chairs were covered and up- 
holstered, the needle plied with a dexterity a 
practised hand need not have disdained, the work 
actually looked of the shop, not home-made. 
The framework was polished with a vigor that 
brought forth all the latent glory of black walnut, 
and a delightful little old-fashioned table, that 
had been laid aside as past use, was unearthed, 
and polished and rubbed till it was one of the 
prettiest things in the room. Early and late did 
Kitty toil, till Mrs. Ware remonstrated; — 

“ Don’t work so hard, dear,” on finding her one 
morning with the hammer long before breakfast. 
“You might take things a little easier; there is 
surely time enough,” 

“Don’t hinder me, mother. I might have 
known I was too clumsy for anything but a 
needle a foot long and twine instead of thread. 
If there is anything I can do, let me pound and 
hammer, and feel that I am not altogether a 
cumberer of the earth.” 

There was an earnestness beneath the words 
that Mrs. Ware caught. It was always difficult 
to tell how much was earnest with Kitty. She 


WHO SEEKS, FINDS. 


337 


could not always have told herself ; beginning in 
one direction, some whimsicality would cross her 
mind and instantly divert it to the new track. 
And, then, she never laughed, rarely smiled, as 
she talked; Marion’s laughter, with something 
mirth-provoking in it, rippled in and out of her 
quick speech. 

“It was all a groping after my talent,” she 
went on, “ which, if death for me to hide, seemed 
likely to be a general shattering, likewise, for 
those who aided me in the search for it. When 
Marion writes the book that is to make her 
famous, and Arthur has discovered the cure for 
cholera, I shall be at the head of American Dec- 
orative Art.” 

At last the finishing stitch was taken, the final 
nail driven, the last inch of bordering pasted on, 
and the two girls proudly called their mother in to 
see their work. Mrs. Ware admired everything, 
overlooked the wriggle in the wall-paper, and 
was blind to the gobbled corner of the rocking- 
chair, as Kitty led her up to her own especial 
window and seated her in the delightful low 
chair, while she bade her look at the flounce that 
the brass-headed nails finished off so neatly, and 
see how beautifully her own gift, the embroid- 
ered tidy, looked over the back. 


338 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

“But Amanda’s love-bench is the crowning 
glory.” It was Marion who spoke, generously 
eager to display her sister’s work ; cushioned, 
be ruffled and pillowed, it seemed a veritable 
creation of Du Maurier’s. “ I couldn’t have 
done it. See, the seat lifts up ; so handy to stow 
things away in,” proceeding to demonstrate the 
ease of their sofa by extending herself full length 
upon it. “I believe I like it better than if I’d 
furnished the room last year as — ” 

She got no farther. Alas for Kitty’s nailing 
and the too fair outside of that metamorphosed 
ironing-table ! The seat gave way and she was 
precipitated on to a collection of old boots and 
shoes, empty mucilage bottles, and rejected MSS. 


CHAPTER XVL 


WORKIES. 

The hot weather continued, merging into the 
stifling heat of the dog-days ; used as they were 
to mountain air at this season, a greater change 
could hardly have been found than to the Hollow, 
with the brook, subsided into a swamp, adding its 
generous quota of fog and dampness. Every 
morning could be seen, from the higher land about, 
the houses dimly defined in the mist that filled 
the basin, like the phantom outlines of Atlantis. 
Mrs. Ware lost appetite, grew thin, and carried 
herself languidly. Kitty looked pale, and the 
study she tried so hard should be study was only 
the form. Besides, Arthur’s visits home were 
interrupted, for the number of patients at the 
hospital lately had increased, and though Dr. 
Dering, who was now impatiently waiting orders, 
offered his services as volunteer aid, the three 
physicians had their hands full. With it, too, 
came a series of petty misfortunes to every mem- 
339 


340 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

ber of the household, as though Fortune, tired of 
cannonading them, had taken to a bean-blower. 
The tenant of the town house gave notice, and it 
was a bad time of year to relet it ; added to this 
worry for Mrs. Ware was the still greater one of 
Arthur’s hard work ; even his leisure time lately 
had been devoted to coaching backward students. 
Then, their own house was proving unequal to 
the strain of occupation. The front steps gave 
way, and the back door warped so as to close that 
entrance likewise ; blinds dropped off all over the 
house, and a cow carried away bodily a part of 
the fence that had been undermined by the 
brook’s rampages. 

It was at this time that the Wares discovered 
a new fact relating to the Hollow. When the 
rent was due, Mr. Eliot appeared promptly on the 
scene — he was the owner of the houses; when 
repairs were wanted, not a soul on either Garrick 
or Kean Street could find him. He resolved into 
thin air. No ; Mr. Eliot did not own that partic- 
ular house’. It was mortgaged to another man, 
who in turn held it in trust for somebody else. 
The hunt for the owner of this much-owned real 
estate was worse than the old woman’s search for 
the means to make her obdurate kid go. 


WOERIES. 


341 


Arthur nailed up the front steps, the bolt on the 
back door went up and down with the thermom- 
eter, and watch was kept for the wandering cow. 
Then it seemed as though everything inside the 
house as well, gave out all at once, and, being un- 
able to replace them, there were many small annoy- 
ances and shabbinesses to endure. The sitting- 
room sofa came to pieces, and though Kitty propped 
up the springs and retufted the torn cover, there 
was still a cavernous depth in the centre. The 
dining-room carpet was faded ; that in the sitting- 
room was worn in the most conspicuous spot. In 
descending the back stairs it was necessary to 
remember that the third stair was to be trod on 
gingerly, and the fifth to be avoided altogether. 
Owing to the ravages of servants, their stock of 
goblets was reduced to two, and, heart-rending 
though it was to contemplate the shelves where 
stacks had stood in days of yore, the decree went 
forth, “We can’t afford it,” and to one person’s 
share fell daily a cup of cold water, which, though 
Scriptural, was apt to be irritating to an individ- 
ual used to the more conventional vessel. 

Marion had her own especial trouble in the 
rejection of her last story; Ann had the tooth- 
ache ; Kitty broke her hand-glass, and, consider- 


342 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES, 

ing it the omen of her own untimely end, would 
not sit on the porch evenings for fear of taking 
cold, and at every thunder-storm crept under a 
feather-bed ; Beauty got shut up in a closet for 
two days. Even Peep was not exempt : his cage 
fell out of the window one morning, and he was 
picked up with his little head cut open. He 
speedily recovered, but with his beauty — his one 
attraction — departed, for he was ever after hope- 
lessly bald. 

One Monday came two ladies, with the mani- 
fest intention of staying to dinner. Now, Mrs. 
Ware had not a particle of false pride about her ; 
nevertheless, it is distinctly unpleasant to let even 
one’s dearest friends — which these people were 
not — into certain secrets of one’s domestic econ- 
omy, and the awful thought, “ Nothing but mut- 
ton-broth for dinner,” did dart through her mind 
even as she welcomed her guests with the quiet 
hospitality that is never flurried and always 
makes the best of things 

But, meantime, behind the scenes, consternation 
reigned amidst the daughters of the house, and 
particularly was it rampant in the breast of the 
younger ; for one of the ladies was Lulu’s mamma, 
and to have her quondam friend know they were 


WOBEIES. 


843 


reduced to two goblets and the pale ghost of 
Sunday’s dinner was to feel poverty’s sting in all 
its sharpness. 

“ Of all obnoxious practices, that of ‘ dropping 
in ’ is the worst ! ” scolded Marion. “ I should 
have thought a baby would know better than to 
come washing-day.” 

They were hanging over the banisters in the 
upper hall, lending a furtive ear to the conversa- 
tion below ; it had become evident the company 
had come to stay. 

“ Tell them we are not dining now till eight,” 
suggested Kitty, desperately. 

‘‘ And the dining-room is all smelly with soap- 
suds. What could the architect have been 
thinking of when he planted it right in the 
kitchen ? ” 

“ And the carpet is so faded where the blind 
is off.” 

“We might put them where the sun would 
dazzle them into blindness of our shortcomings.” 

“ The china ladle is broken, and there is noth- 
ing but the pewter one.” 

“ And this is the week for the bad table-cloth, 
and the napkins aren’t ironed yet.” 

They looked at each other blankly as each 


844 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

added her item. It was one of the most sordid 
sides of poverty, this miserable feeling of shame, 
— of which itself they were ashamed, this stifling 
of the free, gracious spirit of hospitality. 

“ How can mother keep on talking so easily ! 
And she’ll help to the mutton-broth and the 
spoonful of pudding as though it were not a 
Barmecide feast. It’s all very well to talk about 
true hospitality giving its best and not troubling 
over the scantiness of the table. I can’t be philo^ 
sophical under such circumstances. I am ashamed 
of it, and I shall act it.” 

“ At last I sympathize with Mrs. Drew. Could 
not we borrow?” suggested Kitty, desperately. 

“ Heavon forbid ! To what end if we did ? 
Isn’t all Sleepy Hollow dining on cold mutton, 
warmed-over mutton, hashed mutton, mutton- 
broth, mutton-stew? Let’s go down and see 
exactly what there is.” 

On taking account of stock it was found to 
consist of eggs, milk, and fresh bread. At this 
juncture, as though in answer to unspoken pray- 
ers, a voice was heard chanting : — 

“ La — sta ! La — sta ! ” which by interpreta- 
tion was lobsters. 

It was one of the many venders who jogged 


woBitiES. 345 

through Sleepy Hollow ; they took the place of 
the omnipresent coal-cart of the winter. 

“ There is our manna,” said Marion. “ Get 
two, Ann, quick ! They’re sure to be little and 
an awful cheat ; but no matter. This is not the 
time to insist on weight and morality. Now, 
listen ! ” as the girl departed on her mission, “ we 
will not have dinner at all, but luncheon. Ann 
will make ice-cream, I will see to sponge-cake and 
salad, and we will have chocolate, which does 
away with the necessity of goblets. We can 
have the yellow table-cloth and napkins then. 
Now you must crawl through the hole and get 
some lettuce and cucumbers of Mr. Dysart. He 
told me I could have all I wanted. If he offers 
you flowers, take them ; they will help fill up.” 

“ Can’t I do something else ? ” Kitty was 
developing an amiable trait of offering her ser- 
vices on occasion ; the novelty of finding herself 
able to do something had not worn off. “Ill 
make the sponge-cake.” 

“You needn’t,” returned Marion, hastily. “I 
can make the salad while the cake is baking. An 
interview with Mr. Dysart will be more than half. 
One thing more,” as her sister was on the steps ; 
“ laugh at his jokes. Not to laugh at a person’s 


346 


FORCED ACQUAmTAJSrCES. 


jokes is a thing he never really forgives, and the 
lettuce must not be wormy.” 

“You know I never laugh except when a thing 
is funny. I have tried on numberless occasions, 
but can only produce a kind of galvanic grin.” 

“It isn’t decent to go begging for his green 
stuff, and not. I’ll tell you what you can do. 
Think of something amusing when he begins, and 
laugh from beginning to end. Don’t stop laugh- 
ing till he stops talking.” 

“ I can do that,” and she set off with a relieved 
face. 

It was some time before she returned, both 
arms full, her hat well over her eyes, and a rent 
in her dress. Their neighbor had been liberality 
itself, — a dozen cucumbers, a small cart-load of 
lettuce, a gigantic bouquet. The emissary de- 
posited it all in a heap on the table and sat down 
to laugh. 

“ How could you have given me any such ad- 
vice ! I was mindful of what you said, and 
thought up an amusing incident on my way. He 
shortly began a story of how he had sent a little 
chocolate mouse as a wedding present to some 
hapless couple. I laughed, I roared, I got red in 
the face with merriment. He finished, and. 


WOBRIES, 


347 


pleased with my intelligence, began telling me 
about his hay-cold. Still I laughed. He thought 
the fog here would kill him. I was convulsed. 
He said he had had no peace for six weeks. I 
had to take out my handkerchief. He was 
solemn enough when I went, and gave me all 
these flowers — for you — and said you were a 
fine young woman, with an intellect to be proud 
of. And then he looked at me and sighed.” 

The dining-room was successfully cleared of 
flies and soap-suds, and the dainty lunch was 
enjoyed, for the ice-cream was all that could be 
desired, and Marion had the secret of sponge-cake. 
The table was also prettily decorated with 
flowers; Kitty had taken charge of that. A 
spider crawled from the bowl of nasturtiums 
on to one of the guests, who nearly fainted, 
and the lettuce was gritty to the teeth. But 
Marion never uttered a word of reproach after- 
ward ; sometimes Marion seemed a little bit like 
mother. 

This was the last flicker of exertion on the part 
of either girl; even Marion gave herself up to 
a book and fan. It was only a few days later 
that one afternoon Dr. Dering was seen coming 
up the street, and alone. A sudden foreboding 


848 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


chilled Mrs. Ware ; she hastened to the door, and 
her greeting voiced her unformed fears. 

“ Arthur — is anything the matter ? ” 

“ I’m sorry to say there is. I hope it is noth- 
ing serious. He has not been well for some time, 
but wouldn’t give up. But he had to, day before 
yesterday.” 

“ Why was I not told at once ? ” 

“ He would not have you told ; he insisted that 
he should be up the next day. Don’t be un- 
duly alarmed, Mrs. Ware ; I think he will pull 
through.” 

She was very pale, but perfectly collected, as 
usual ; she spoke again. 

“Please wait half an hour; we can take the 
next train. I wish to go to him.” 

“ He has the best of care — the best nurses — ” 
I must be with him.” 

They spoke a little longer. It was fever, 
caused partly by overwork; he had been deliri- 
ous since the night before. Dr. Dering made no 
attempt to conceal the seriousness of the case, 
but gave all the comfort he could. Mrs. Ware 
went upstairs slowly and heavily. She had been 
vaguely fearing something, and now the blow had 
fallen. Arthur ill, lying near to death — nay. 


woheies. 


349 


already passed away, and she not with him. For, 
though Dr. Dering, with truest kindness, had 
withheld nothing, he hoped for the best, he 
would have her hope, too ; underneath the cheer- 
ing words, in spite of himself and the opinion he 
gave with all honesty, she had read the verdict. 
We are so loath to part with those dear to us that 
we cannot give up hope, even when reason, ex- 
perience, medical skill itself, would warn of the 
end. But the mother’s heart had read the 
opinion the doctor would fain have concealed, 
even from himself. Marion met her at the top 
of the stairs; she was pale, too, but spoke col- 
lectedly. 

“ Let me go with you. Yes, we heard. Please 
let me. I can be of some use.” 

“ Come, then. I should be glad to have you.” 

It was in the shadow of this deepest trouble 
that had ever fallen upon her that the mother 
realized the help her elder daughter had become 
to her the past year. It was one of the freaks by 
which Fate mocks us. They in health in Sleepy 
Hollow, with its swamp and damp cellars and 
lack of drainage, and Arthur, in his hospital on 
the hill, felled by fever. 

Kitty did not speak. Kitty did not beg to go 


850 


FORCED ACQUAIJSrTANCES. 


too, as she longed to. The old misery of useless- 
ness was upon her again, but tenfold increased 
now. If anything should happen to Arthur I 
She tried to be heroic too, like mother and Mar- 
ion, and did her best to help them get the train 
that went in one little half-hour, succeeding in 
doing more to hinder than any other three causes 
combined, from dropping the handkerchiefs in a 
shower to the hall below, to breaking the lock of 
the bag, in a too zealous effort to mend it with 
the hammer — the one implement that seemed to 
fit itself to her hand. 

But there was time, after all, for a few minutes’ 
comfort and directions. 

“I will write, dear. Don’t worry too much. 
Let me know how you are getting on. Ann will 
look after everything and do the ordering.” For 
the half-hour, short as it had been, had contained 
enough minutes for Mrs. Ware to devote several 
to arranging for Kitty’s comfort. “ You had 
better write to Gertie Meredith to come and 
stay with you. Do you think you can get 
along? ” 

“I am sure I can. I’ll look after Ann and 
everything at home.” 

“ That will be just as much of a help, dear.” 


WOEBIES. 351 

“I’ll come out and report,” promised Dr. De- 
ring. 

“ I’ll write often,” added Marion. 

But Kitty’s heart was heavy as she went up- 
stairs to watch them off. It was not the lonely 
house, nor Dr. Dering’s grave face, nor her 
mother’s anxiety, nor even the unhappy thought 
of how useless she always was in any emergency. 

It was the recollection of that broken looking- 
glass. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
kitty’s housekeeping. 

In response to Kitty’s note, Gertie Meredith 
appeared the next afternoon, her baggage in a 
minute parcel in her pocket, a big box of candy 
under one arm, a bag of peanuts under the other, 
and an umbrella balanced on her shoulder. A 
girl with bright brown eyes and reddish brown 
hair; she envied her friend’s beauty in but one 
particular — the lashes, that, as thick on under as 
on upper lid, helped to give Kitty’s eyes their 
peculiar starry look. In consequence of this 
feeling, she had, the previous winter, anointed 
her own eyelids with a preparation warranted to 
make the shortest, stubbiest lashes long and silky. 
The result of this experiment was a course of 
visits to the oculist’s, some weeks in a darkened 
room, and the necessity of abstaining from using 
her eyes for as many months. Owing both to 
this, and her haunting fear of meeting Arthur, 
she had not been out since the spring, so the 
greeting on each side was a warm one. “ I really 
352 


KITTY^S HOUSEKEEPING, 353 

don’t know what I should have done here alone. 
O, what lovely candy ! ” 

“You can’t have any now; it’s for to-night. 
How’s Arthur ? ” 

“ He’s pretty sick ; and I’m so afraid — ” 
Kitty told her friend about the broken glass ; the 
answer cheered her more than hours of reasoning. 

“ That isn’t a true sign ; I broke mine last year. 
If it had been a dog howling under the window, 
or thirteen at the table, it would be something to 
be frightened at. Where’s Bulger?” Next to 
Bulger’s master did Gertie stand in terror of 
that lively dog. 

“ He killed three hens the last time he was out, 
and he and Beauty had a fight ; I did not know 
before she had any temper. And he barked and 
went at Mr. Duncan so that he flew into the 
house. We did not know anything could make 
him move, either. But mother thought Arthur 
had better not bring him out again, just yet.” 

“ I want you to come home with me to-morrow, 
and stay till Arthur is well. Father wouldn’t let 
us have company or go anywhere till now. 
We’ll have a lovely time; there’s a yacht race 
next week, and Ned Keith’s boat is in it; and 
there’s going to be a tennis party, too.” 


354 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

Kitty’s face lit up, her mouth opened. The 
next moment her face had fallen, and her lips 
uttered something different from what she had at 
first intended. 

“ I can’t. I told mother I’d take care of the 
house, and look after Ann.” 

“ They’ll get along all right. Do come.” 

Gertie was an inveterate tease. How many 
times, the previous winter, her “ just a minute 
longer” had been the cause of Kitty’s tardiness, 
could not be told. And now Kitty had been at 
home all summer, and the prospect of change and 
fun was very tempting. It was so stiflingly hot 
here, too, and at the Merediths’ one was always 
sure of that afternoon breeze ; but she stood firm 
for the next half-hour. 

“ But I don’t wan’t you to lose the fun on my 
account.” 

Gertie made the sacrifice on her side too, 
though not without a little ebullition of temper. 

“I’m going to stay if you won’t come. But 
seems to me you’ve grown amazingly virtuous all 
of a sudden. Last time you stayed with me you 
didn’t go to school the whole time.” 

That was what Gertie said, vexed at the 
change a few months had wrought in her life- 


KITTY ^8 HOUSEKEEPING. 355 

long friend. This was how the two girls took 
care of the house and looked after Ann. 

They sat up till eleven with a pile of old story- 
papers and magazines; Gertie was never sleepy, 
and would have kept on burrowing in the papers 
all night had not the prospect of a collation in- 
duced her, at last, to propose bed. Upon it was 
spread a feast. A heaping plate of corn-balls, a 
pile of Ann’s delicious cookies, half a dozen 
apples, none too ripe, the big box of candy, a bag 
of pickled limes, ditto of peanuts. 

“ Let’s try some charm,” proposed Gertie. 
“ Something for dreams ; that’s a good one : — 

* I cross my boots in the form of a T, 

Hoping my true love to see — ’ ” 

The initials of all her charms had a tendency 
to be A. M. W. In the Wares’ house, the 
chances were certainly favorable that she should 
dream of the owner of the initials. 

“After eating all that? Not for the world. 
Besides, I’ve had enough of charms. I counted 
nine stars nine nights, and shook hands with Mr. 
Dysart.” 

“Let’s tell stories, then,” beginning on the 
corn-balls, as they curled well down into bed, the 


356 


FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES. 


lamp turned low, on the table close at hand ; the 
stories in the sitting-room had been of such a 
nature as to render a light desirable. 

“ All right. You begin.” 

And Gertie did begin; and, having dipped 
rather deeply into Bulwer and Poe, had a fine 
stock of material upon which to draw, while 
Kitty, on her side, had a large miscellaneous 
fund, together with several particularly choice 
tales from “The Night-Side of Nature,” and Le 
Fanu. As the candy waxed low, cores lay where 
apples had been, and the cookies were crunched 
with a relish they could not have met with at a 
normal hour, so did the stories grow of a more 
and more supernatural hue, while every noise and 
crackle to which even the most solidly built 
house will give vent in the midnight hours 
seemed to the two foolish children to herald the 
advent of some ghostly visitor. Still they kept 
on, though ’by this time they were well under the 
bed-clothes. At last, Kitty, fired by one of Miss 
Broughton’s Christmas Tales, volunteered a bit 
of personal experience. 

“ It happened when we were at home and I was 
a very little girl. I have never told anybody, 
not even you, I’ve been so afraid it meant some- 


KITTY’S HOUSEKEEPING. 2>bl 

thing dreadful — softening of the brain, maybe. 
I’ve read of insane people having such hallucina- 
tions. But this was not an hallucination. I saw 
it, really and truly. You will never tell? I 
don’t like to speak of it, even now, very well. 
You remember the long entry that ran the length 
of the house into the L ? It was there. It was 
after tea, and I had run upstairs alone. 

“ The gas was not lit in the sitting-room, only 
the cannel coal was blazing up bright. It made 
everything look so funny that I turned about all 
of a sudden, to go downstairs again. I cannot 
tell you the feeling that came over me. The 
whole air seemed full. I do not know of what, 
but full. I looked toward the nursery; not 
because I wanted to, but because I could not 
help it. 

“Coming out of the black doorway, coming 
slowly toward me, I saw — Me. 

“Yes, me. I thought for a moment I was 
frozen, like the people Perseus showed the Gor- 
gon’s head to. I opened my mouth and tried to 
scream, but could not. I tried to move my foot. 
It stuck to the floor. I felt all over as you feel 
in the nightmare. And all the time the other 
Me was coming toward me, the real me, and my 


358 FORCED ACqUAINTAECES. 

head was bursting. She was dressed like me, 
had eyes just like me. Sometimes it was I 
who had come out of the nursery and was there, 
moving slowly and looking at the petrified me. 

“ I heard the sound of chairs pushed back in 
the dining-room — something seemed to break — 
she was almost up to me. If she had touched 
me, I should have gone raving mad on the spot. 
But the sound had broken the spell. I gave a 
scream, and jumped from top to bottom of the 
stairs. And that is the reason, Gertie Meredith, 
why, ever since, I have been so horribly, stiflingly 
afraid of the dark ; and you are the only person 
that knows it.” 

Whether her friend appreciated this token of 
confidence is problematic. Before Kitty had 
fairly ended, her guest had her in a convulsive 
embrace, and was in hysterics. It was half an 
hour before she was calmed. They both decided 
they had heard enough stories for one night, and 
would go to sleep — if they could. But Gertie 
wanted her handkerchief ; half an hour’s sobbing 
had left her in imperative need of it. Kitty had 
hung her dress in the closet, and now refused to 
get out of bed with her. Teasing was of no 
avail, and she was at last obliged to slip reluc- 


KITTY’S HOUSEKEEPING. 359 

tantly out alone, thanking her lucky stars for 
that dim light. 

“ Couldn’t you find it ? ” questioned Kitty. 

Her friend had left the closet, almost at the 
moment of opening the door, and was now in the 
middle of the room. The answer was only 
gasped. 

“ The — la — dy of — the Guil — lo — ” and 
then succeeded a series of choking gasps, as 
though a nervous contraction had closed the 
trachea. It was frightful to hear her. 

Kitty was out of bed, too, in one leap, scream- 
ing at the top of her voice. Any way, anywhere, 
to get away from the awful Presence they had 
conjured up. Straight against the table she 
came, over it went, the lamp with it, and the next 
moment the curtain was ablaze. 

The sight of the real peril acted on the terror 
from the imaginary one. Gertie found breath 
and voice, they screamed in unison ; both miracu- 
lously recovered their wits and, with one thought, 
seized the rug and rushed with it to the flames. 
It was done so quickly, the Are had not time to 
get fairly under way; only the pretty new 
curtains were spoilt, and the bear-skin badly 
scorched. Ann was speedily on the scene, and, 


860 FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES, 

with her help, the last smoulder was extin- 
guished. 

Kitty, having nearly frightened her friend into 
convulsions, was in a state of the tensest nervous 
excitement herself; she begged Ann not to leave 
them, and the good-natured girl slept on the 
lounge every night of the new housekeeper’s 
reign. 

A fire in Sleepy Hollow would have been sec- 
ond only to one at sea, and loss of reason has 
followed a less terrible fright than Gertie Mere- 
dith received from the unexpected vision of 
Harriet. 


CHAPTER XVIIL 


DARK DAYS, 

Afterward, Marion realized better all that 
Dr. Dering was to them in those sad days at the 
hospital. At the time, she was only conscious of 
a feeling of rest and security when he was pres- 
ent. There was but little time when he was not 
with them ; when or how he slept no one knew, 
unless it was, perhaps, in the couple of hours he 
was habitually absent in the afternoon. He at 
once assumed all charge of Arthur, Dr. Coutts 
only paying daily visits. There had always been 
something of a protective element in his friend- 
ship, due in part to his seniority, in part to his 
being of an older and graver temperament, and 
one that unconsciously takes that attitude toward 
all younger or weaker than itself. It appeared 
now in a hundred little acts of womanly tender- 
ness ; he sat by the bedside not alone as doctor, 
but as the most faithful nurse a man could have. 

He was their one hope. Dr. Coutts looked 
grave, and evaded Marion’s questions. Once he 
361 


862 


FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES. 


answered, “ Where there is life there is hope,” — 
that formula almost equivalent to a death sen- 
tence, Dr. Dering, though he, too, did not an- 
swer with confidence or directness, seemed, by the 
very force of his own vitality, to infuse new life 
into the sick boy. Where he was, death could 
not be. 

Arthur was very low. At the first, they hoped 
that the constitution that had so long withstood 
illness would speedily rally from it. But it now 
seemed as though all of the young man’s strength 
had gone into that struggle, and that his vital 
force had at last yielded at one blow. It was not 
alone in the sick-room that they learned to know 
and love John Dering as the son and brother had. 
They had seen him with more or less regularity 
for months ; but that acquaintance was slight and 
superficial now. He took charge of Mrs. Ware’s 
business affairs, he paid frequent visits to Sleepy 
Hollow, and did all he could to relieve Kitty’s 
anxiety, bringing back to her mother cheery 
accounts of how nicely the two girls were getting 
along. 

It all came at just the right time, too, to assure 
Marion that there was such a thing as honest 
friendship, and, in the face of the thousand and 


BARK BAYS. 


363 


one deeds of disinterested kindness, to banish her 
ugly doubts forever; somehow, she felt ashamed 
of them in John Dering’s presence. Yet it was 
not more in his showing himself, in very truth, 
“Arthur’s friend,” than in the intimate knowl- 
edge she came to have of his own large faith in 
humanity, springing from a broad, healthy, tran- 
quil nature. In contact with it, she, too, could 
not fail to gain a larger sympathy, a more chari- 
table insight. Even that which was truly noble 
in her — ambition — looked ignoble beside the 
like in him ; for, even at the best, it was small 
and mean to be “writing something worthy to 
be done,” whilst he was “ doing something 
worthy to be written.” 

One day they were in the court-yard together, 
behind the hospital. He had been out to Sleepy 
Hollow in the morning, and was telling her about 
Kitty and her friend ; he would treasure up any 
bits of news he thought might cheer her. The 
Japanese youth had become enamoured of Gertie, 
and, with the courtesy of his race, had invited 
her to call upon him, “if such were the custom 
of the country.” 

“ He had probably heard how we called on 
you,” said Marion. 


364 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

She had not liked to have the double mistake 
that began their acquaintance alluded to ; but it 
did not matter now — nothing mattered much. 
Something of the feeling was on her that comes 
over one after a great loss — of strangeness in 
everything, as though we had been transported, 
over night, Aladdin like, to some foreign country, 
and had somehow left our identity behind. She 
laughed a little as she spoke, but hushed immedi- 
ately. It sounded strange, and Dr. Dering would 
think her heartless. She wondered a little why 
she should care for that. 

“Why do you do it?” she began abruptly. 
“ Arthur took care of you, I know ; but you are 
doing a great deal more. If you were our elder 
brother, it could not be more.” 

With his answer the last morbid doubt van- 
ished. As long as John Dering lived, there was 
truth in man, and self-interest did not lie at the 
bottom of every human action. 

“I don’t know that I thought about owing 
anything. Good measure, pressed down and run- 
ning over, though gratitude may be — it is meas- 
ured.” 

They had fallen into the way of sitting on this 
bench, sometimes talking of Arthur, again of 


DARK DAYS, 


865 


other things. He had insisted on her going out 
every day, and she had yielded. For the first 
few mornings neither had much to say. 

“Trots me out for exercise, like a horse or 
dog,” thought Marion. “ He might at least make 
himself a little agreeable.” For now and then the 
old feeling of covert vexation, of wanting to 
assert herself, would creep in. What broke the 
stiffness was Bulger; he was whining piteously 
one day from his corner. 

“ I’ve fed him already, but I suppose he 
wants more,” said Dr. Dering, reflectively. “ His 
chronic state is to want more. I presume he 
misses the coats and trousers he has been in the 
habit of lunching on.” 

They had come to the place where the dog was 
tied. 

“ Let’s feed him now.” 

And after that, he was the object of their 
walk, that grew a little slower, a little longer, 
each day ; and often, after the half-hour’s exercise 
commanded was over, they sat on the low green 
bench, in the shade of the big building, yet 
another half-hour. Neither realized whither they 
were drifting. For the girl, Arthur’s danger was 
the one thought that shut out all others. She 


366 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


only knew she clung to Dr. Dering as she 
never had to any one in her life before. Their 
acquaintance had begun so inauspiciously ; in his 
frequent visits to the house, he had plainly shown 
he preferred the society of Arthur and his pipe 
to hers ; she could never think of that evening at 
the fair, without feeling again his contempt — 
with all this in the background, it was an ac- 
cepted idea that she disliked Dr. Dering. 

On the young man’s side — well, he had seen 
she avoided him, and he was not used to feminine 
society and did not care for it. So it was not 
strange that, on the other hand, girls should not 
care for him. Had it not been for what was now 
happening, he would have returned to his army- 
life, for the first time, with a vague regret ; and, 
a good deal more than was comfortable, he would 
have thought of a little brown house, a gentle, 
low-voiced woman, and two bright-faced girls, 
whose welcome had opened to him a new kind of 
life, alike in contrast to that of his own rough 
boyhood and to the transient homes of a western 
military station. It was not likely a girl would 
care for a man who could not dance, who was not 
up in ladies’ ways, who, somehow, never had 
much to say to them. 


BABK DAYS, 


36T 


But by and by, as time went on, the images 
and fancies would have faded, and he would one 
day have wellnigh forgotten them. There was 
his profession, and, in any event, his was too 
healthy and active a nature ever to let regret or 
sorrow prey upon it. He had an idea, though, 
that this girl cared for more than for dancing, and 
dresses, and flirtation. How womanly she had 
seemed last winter, in her housewifely cares and 
little anxieties that she tried so hard, in her 
pretty, well bred way, to conceal. And how 
gracefully she had turned aside the blunders of 
a careless cook, or her own inexperience. He 
had looked forward to those weekly visits as his 
one relaxation. 

Of all the time he was apparently absorbed 
with Arthur and his pipe, that had been the 
pleasantest to him when Marion would come in 
and out of the sitting-room, with the big white 
apron and pretty, flushed cheeks. Once he had 
gone to the dining-room — there was a short pass- 
age-way between there and the kitchen, — she 
was standing by the slate-table, beating eggs ; the 
girl had just spilt the milk for the pudding, 
and what could they do for dessert ? 

He stood there, behind the door, eavesdropping. 


368 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

It was mean, but he wanted to see how Marion 
would take it ; the girl had laughed, too, at the 
mishap. When the Chinese servant had let the 
cream-jug fall, at the breakfast the mess was giv- 
ing to the Inspector-General, he himself did not 
take it very coolly. But Marion did not say a 
word ; she only bit her lip and walked out of the 
kitchen. She had on a cap that day, and the big 
white apron ; Dr. Dering had the masculine fond- 
ness for such. 

It was odd how many little pictures he had of 
her. A nice girl, and a clever one; much like 
Arthur in many wa3^s. He had often wished she 
would stay in the sitting-room and talk to him, or 
sing, after dinner, in the parlor. But then, he 
was much older than she ; and he had always felt 
older even than his actual years. He had no 
business with anything young and pretty and 
spirited. 

The Merediths’ handsome house had no attrac- 
tion for him ; nor, perhaps, would the Wares’ old 
one have had. He would have met Cinderella at 
a score of balls and passed her by unheeding. 
At her own fireside, most of all in the kitchen 
corner, had she charmed and won him. 

It did not occur to him, in their daily walks, that 


DAEK DATS. 


369 


he was experiencing none of the old difficulty of 
“ nothing to say.” To talk seemed the simplest 
and most natural thing in the world. About his 
life at the military post, the exploring expedition 
up the Alaska, the society at the station, how the 
ladies inevitably quarrelled about their children 
and their chickens. Yes, they all kept chickens ; 
it gave them something to do, and it was dull at 
the post. Then, sometimes, latterly, of the old 
life when a boy, on the little rocky farm, a hint 
now and then, of those early struggles. He did 
not speak of them to everybody. She always 
seemed interested. 

There came a day when he spoke only of 
Arthur; gravely and sadly. They — he and Dr. 
Coutts — had had a consultation that morning, 
and — 

“ He cannot live ? ” 

Queer how the calmness with which it was 
said reminded him of that episode of the spilt 
milk; as of something held in with all her 
strength. 

“ There is just a chance ; no more. His consti- 
tution is in his favor. To-night will decide.” 

“If there is a chance, ever so small a one, 
don’t tell mother.” 


370 


FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES. 


It was the climax from the lessons and strug- 
gles, of the past year — that, in that moment, her 
thought had been, not of her own grief, but of 
another’s. 

“Not if there is any hope,” she repeated 
steadily, when the young man would have re- 
monstrated. “ She does not ask, you have seen. 
She will not have it so. Better have it as it is. 
“It will come” — there was a little choke here 
— “ too soon if it must, and, perhaps, on the 
other hand, we should only give her needless 
pain.” 

“We.” How queer that made him feel in the 
region where anatomy alone had hitherto taught 
him his heart was., 

“ Do — all you can.” 

“ I have. I will.” 

All through that stifling August day he 
watched her, bearing the burden of her knowl- 
edge alone. Once, as she handed him a cup of 
beef-tea, she smiled ; a pitiful little smile, that 
tried so hard to be brave and say, “See, I can do 
it. I won’t let her guess.” 

If it had not been for the sympathy in his 
every look and action, perhaps she could not 
have borne up. But, as it was, Mrs. Ware never 


DABK DAYS. 371 

knew that the fatal words had been all but 
spoken, and, whatever were her own thoughts, she 
kept them to herself, as she had done all along. 

Arthur had been delirious a large part of the 
time, talking, not at all of his daily life and duties, 
but of college days, of trips made here and there 
in vacation ; for the greater part of one night he 
was on a canoe trip down the river ; perhaps, the 
hot room made him long for the cool, tree-shaded 
water. But for the few past days he had lain in 
a stupor, with arms flung over his head. He 
looked oddly boyish, for they had cut away the 
thick brown beard he had cherished with such 
care, with the theory, “ If I had more hair on my 
face and less on the top of my head, I should 
advance faster in my profession.” It displayed 
the sensitive mouth and square chin, cleft by the 
dimple of which he had always been secretly 
ashamed. How much he looked like Kitty, now ! 
thought Marion, and in the chords that interlace 
earthly affection there was a sensitive thrill that 
made Kitty herself nearer and dearer as she 
realized that with every moment she let go so 
grudgingly was running out the time when she 
could look upon his living face. 

What should they do if Arthur died! The 


372 FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

agony and the doubt that come to us all sooner 
or later were tugging at her heart, as she sat by 
the bedside, fanning him, or now and then slip- 
ping the tiny bits of ice between his hot lips. 
That was all she could do. They would have 
given their own lives, so gladly, to have saved 
his — and they sat there powerless. 

Ambition before, the years of patient, honest 
work behind, seemed wasted now, as at two and 
twenty life ebbed away. And to the agony 
would succeed and mingle the bitter, baffling 
question that all the philosophy and religion the 
world has ever held or will hold is futile to 
answer. Why, with so many worthless lives, 
must this one be sacrificed? 

Dr. Dering left them for a little while in the 
afternoon, to come again to spend the night. 
Mrs. Ware looked up at him as he bent over the 
bed, and Marion saw the look, and knew that the 
thought, “Don’t let mother know,” had been a 
vain one. Conceal from her aught that concerned 
Arthur’s weal or woe ! 

What her mother’s heart had told her as surely 
as the physician’s knowledge, she, too, would 
have kept from another. Her eyes, with the 
same question in them, “ Does she know ? ” met 


DARK BAYS, 


373 


Marion’s. In moments of keenest suffering or 
tensest excitement, a kind of clairvoyance is not 
infrequent. Involuntarily each stretched out her 
hand. Perhaps oftener in a hand-clasp than by 
word or deed does soul meet soul. 

So they sat through the long hours of that 
night, without speaking, both with eyes that 
hardly left the face of the sick boy. Dr. Dering 
was by the window, where he, too, could watch 
him. Now and again he came to the bed. Once 
he spoke — some trivial direction as he injected 
brandy. Again he put a shawl about Marion’s 
shoulders. 

“ You will take cold,” he said. “ This is the 
worst possible time to take cold.” 

What if she did ? She felt an angry impulse to 
shake off the shawl. How heartless of her to 

I 

take heed of her own comfort, when Arthur lay 
there so still and white — Arthur, always active 
and brimming over with life. 

And to-morrow — to-morrow — no, she could 
not, would not, grasp the thought of a life with- 
out him. To all of them, each in her individual 
way, mother, Marion, Kitty, he was so near. 
Nobody could ever take Arthur’s place to her. 
She could never talk to any one as she did 
to him. 


374 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


There, she must not get to thinking in that 
strain. There was a queer feeling in her throat. 
How could she have reproached herself, five min- 
utes before, that she was not feeling it as she 
ought? A large part of the night had been 
passed in such alternations — of self-reproach, that 
she was unfeeling; of suffering and wonder, that 
she could have fancied for a moment she was not 
feeling it enough. 

The latter phase was sharp upon her now. 
She must give no sign ; for his sake, for mother’s. 
She withdrew her hand gently and went to the 
window, just as Dr. Dering came forward again. 

He was there a little longer this time ; and she 
stood by the window as the fog lightened and 
showed the faint outlines of the town below ; a 
little farther, the tops of the masts of the ships in 
the harbor. Everything gray and hopeless. And 
the to-morrow she could not anticipate was al- 
most here. 

There was a little stir at the bed ; she turned. 
Mother was leaning back in her chair, her face 
covered with her hands. Dr. Dering was bend- 
ing over the bed, smoothing the coverlid. Then 
he, too, turned and came back to his place by the 
window. 


BABK BAYS. 


375 


Just then the first ray of the sun lightened 
through the mist, and gleamed for a second on 
the window-sill. To-morrow was come. And he 
stood there to tell her. 

There were two thoughts — sensations, rather 
— uppermost. One was a dull surprise, “ Why, 
I’m not feeling this half as much as I thought I 
should.” It was something in common with the 
terrible moment when a lion has a man under his 
paw ; those who have been in the situation say 
that there is no agony either for that moment, or 
for what will follow — rather a half-soporific sur- 
render of self and will. Marion’s other sensation 
concerned a little picture on the opposite wall. 
It was of the Rialto, or some such place — for all 
the resemblance, it might as well have been the 
bridge in the Gardens. And she was thinking, 
“ O dear, if it were only hung straight ! As soon 
as he’s told me. I’ll go over there and even it.” 

There followed a flash. Scarcely knowing 
what she did, she stretched out both hands, 
blindly obeying a childish impulse to grasp 
strength higher and greater than her own. 

“ Help me I ” she said. 

Words never uttered by her before to any one. 
And the strong man, whose nature and mission it 


376 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

was to help, took the hands and held them in his 
own. True doctor’s hands they were, with that 
look of nerve-strength they all have. Perhaps that 
was the moment when, unconscious to both, the 
need of the one soul was uttered and the other 
answered it. He spoke then. Only three words. 

“ He will live.” 

The next morning Arthur opened his eyes, 
looked up and recognized them. Too weak to 
speak, too weak for even the desire, he only 
smiled, then closed his eyes and fell asleep again. 
For the first time for many days, Mrs. Ware con- 
sented to lie down. The next two or three days 
were to her like those in which her first-born lay 
in her arms, with a new world before them both. 

He improved steadily, though slowly ; pretty 
soon talked a little, then took an interest in his 
meals, then — encouraging sign — began to find 
fault with them. Before the week was over, he 
was asking questions about outside matters, and 
wanted the papers read to him. 

For the past day or two. Dr. Dering’s calls had 
diminished to one short daily one. He had re- 
signed his temporary position at the hospital. 
One afternoon he came in late, talked for a while 
with Arthur, and presently suggested to Marion 


BABK DAYS. 


377 


that they take a walk. She was to return home 
the following day, leaving Mrs. Ware still at the 
hospital. The}^ did not go to their old haunt, the 
court-yard, but down the deserted street, walking 
slowly, not saying much, and both with an odd 
undercurrent of something like regret that the 
days in the big white building behind them ended 
to-morrow. Presently they came to the little de- 
serted office, and Marion stopped to spell out, 
letter by letter, the dust-covered sign. Her com- 
panion drew out a key. 

“Shall we go in? ” and he turned the door. 

“ I should know it for Arthur’s apartment any- 
where,” peering curiously about and sweeping up 
a handful of burnt matches from the window-sill. 

“I thought Arthur was saving them for next 
winter’s firewood, so I haven’t touched them.” 

She had seated herself in the big chair behind 
the table, her hat pushed partly back. It was a 
poor, stuffy little room — then. She was about to 
idly write her name in the dust that lay white be- 
fore her. 

“ Why ! ” She sat with upraised forefinger, for 
somebody had forestalled it. “ Marion,” “ Marion,” 
lay everywhere before her. “ Marion.” There 
was scarce an available inch that did not bear the 


378 


FOBCEB ACQUAINTANCES, 


name. She had risen in her surprise, and was 
looking up at him. 

“I was in here yesterday,” he said. “There 
wasn’t any patient in, and I got to thinking ; I’ve 
forgotten to dust much lately. I thought I’d 
look out for Arthur’s practice while he wasn’t up 
to it, you know.” 

It was only another item in the sum total. 
The hours which they thought he took for much- 
needed rest had been spent here, then. 

“Yes, it was I who wrote it. I’m going away, 
too, to-morrow.” 

“Going — away? From the hospital, you 
mean ? ” 

“From the city. From the East. My orders 
came yesterday.” 

“We shall not see you again ? I — am sorry.” 

So she was. So sorry that a dull pain had come 
into her heart, , a kind of sickening pain, the 
reason of which she did not even yet understand. 

“We shall all be sorry,” she repeated. “We 
shall miss you. Where are you going ? ” 

“ West again. On the frontier.” 

“ Shall you be gone long ? ” 

“ Three years, in any case ; very likely, longer. 
There is nothing in particular to call me home.” 


dauk bays. 


379 


He could not conceal from himself that the 
place he called home he had long ago outgrown. 

No, of course, there was not. But with his 
last words the pain had unaccountably increased. 
There was a minute or two of silence. Her eyes 
were tracing out, mechanically, letter by letter, 
the written name on the table. It was the 
spoken name that made her look up. 

“ Marion ? ” 

He had taken off the ugly disfiguring glasses, 
and the blue eyes looked straight into hers. 
Then she knew ; saw, as one sees a whole land- 
scape in a lightning flash, what he was to her, 
what she to him. 

With it was that inexplicable sense of having 
been in precisely the same situation, somewhere, 
some time, before. Perhaps, the look bore her 
back to, that other moment, months before, when 
her upward glance had shown her the blue eyes 
that revealed the man in his true character ; ever 
since then, till this moment, she had, indeed, seen 
him through ugly dark glasses. Perhaps, it had 
its root in a yet deeper feeling. The love she 
recognized now had had its birth then, conscious 
to her only in some inmost recess of being. 

“ Marion ! ” he repeated. 


380 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES, 


That was all that was spoken, but the out- 
stretched arms said more, the face was eloquent 
with the love that finds its expression more natu- 
rally in deeds than in words ; and she understood, 
as, in silence, too, she slipped into the protecting 
arms, while heart and brain acknowledged their 
master in “ Arthur’s friend.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 


HOME AGAIN. 

“Effie Faulkner is coming. She has on a 
pink dress and that smelly perfume. I could 
stand either alone, but when they exist, so to 
speak, in chemical combination — not that I know 
what that means — it becomes too much for me. 
I am engaged. No, you are; which is the reason 
of her call. Don’t go down.” 

Marion was on the bed, in the luxury of dress- 
ing-sacque, slippers, and new book. She had just 
come from the kitchen, and the preparations for 
the gala supper that was to celebrate the return 
of mother and Arthur. Then she felt an odd 
reluctance to have her engagement commented 
on by profane lips. Miss Faulkner would be sure 
to have a good deal to say about Arthur’s illness, 
too. 

“ I’ll go for you,” said Kitty, interpreting the 
sigh aright. 

“ Thank you ; no. I’ll go. I suppose she means 
381 


382 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


kindly, and it may have been an exertion for 
her, too, to have put a dress on this hot after- 
noon.” She ran down, followed by a whisper 
from her sister, “Be sure and leave the windows 
open.” 

Miss Faulkner greeted her effusively, and 
subsided into the big crimson easy-chair. She 
wanted to be the first with congratulations. 
What a dreadful time she must have had at the 
hospital! so romantic! Was she really to go out 
to him and be married right away ? She paused 
for lack of breath, and to see the visible sign and 
token of the engagement. 

“Why, I haven’t any. It’s the first time I’ve 
thought of it.” 

Miss Faulkner opened her eyes, and for once 
had nothing to say. A girl who was engaged, 
and who did not care enough about proclaiming 
the fact to have a big diamond solitaire ! From 
that time she was convinced that that engage- 
ment would never come to anything. 

“And are you really going out to him this 
fall?” 

“We aren’t to be married for three years. I 
don’t expect to see him till then. Mother says I 
am too young, and Dr. Dering thinks it better. 


HOME AGAIN, 


383 


too, to wait till he has a better position and 
more pay.” 

“ It really seems as though things were happen- 
ing here.” She had never understood Marion ; 
this incomprehensible conduct completed her 
bewilderment. “Have you heard that Mrs. 
Eliot and Mrs. Drew don’t speak? They even 
go on opposite sides of the street, and won’t take 
the same car into town.” 

“ I thought their friendship was not subject to 
the usual mutabilities of feminine regard, since 
they have shaken off the shackles of womanhood. 
So it could not have foundered on the usual rock 
of its friendship — a man. Did their views differ 
on Cosmogony?” 

“Mrs. Eliot laughed at Mrs. Drew’s bonnet. 
She is going away.” 

“ To avoid the unhappy results at her strictures 
on her friend’s head-gear ? ” 

“ She is going to open a school for girls.” 

“ I am glad.” Marion spoke heartily. “ She 
will never be happy till she has something more 
concrete to educate than our community of 
fallen fortunes. She has done her best by us; 
let us all wish the best for her. Between that 
and the fact she can at last vote, though only 


384 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

on the school-committee, she must be a happy 
woman.” 

“The Japanese is going with her; he is to 
enter college. He inquired for you last night as 
he was going.” 

“ Thank you ; it was kind to remember me so 
soon after he came. And the Duncan boy gone, 
too? It will be lonesome for you. How fortu- 
nate those two little boys on Kean Street were 
not drowned last winter.” 

“We are going, too.” 

“ To college, or out West?” To the end of her 
days, people like Effie Faulkner would make her 
whet her tongue. Her caller took her leave, 
thinking that her engagement had made Marion 
Ware a more disagreeable girl than ever; and 
there wa^s nothing in ij to set her up so, either. 

In the army. She would have to live out West, 
probably, for years; poor; a doctor’s wife never 
had her husband to herself ; no settled home ; 
perhaps, in the course of time, a desirable station 
somewhere East. 

Marion knew it all, too. But she still sat in 
the parlor after her guest had gone, and there 
was a happy little smile on her face as she built 
castles in a way Kitty herself could have no more 


HOME AGAIN, 


385 


than equalled. The bell rang again. It was 
Annie Meredith. 

“ I couldn’t wait till we returned before coming 
out. I’m so glad ! So glad for you both, dear ! ” 

“ Besides, I wanted to be congratulated, too.” 
It was after they had had a good talk, Annie 
looked happy and merry and shy all at once. 
Her friend guessed in a twinkling. 

“ You and Ned ! ” with the warmth of one who 
would have all the world in the same blissful con- 
dition as herself. 

“Yes, Ned and I. But our affair is entirely 
different from yours,” doing her best to speak in 
her usual dignified, rather cold manner. “ There 
isn’t a particle of romance in it ; we have known 
and liked each other for years, in a calm, sensible 
way, and every summer since we were children 
we have played and rowed and fished and driven 
together. It was at a yacht race. Ned’s boat 
beat, and we gave a lawn party impromptu in his 
honor. It — it was then.” 

“ What will the girls say ? They’ve always 
thought him safe with you. And you look and 
act so cold, except when, now and then, you let 
somebody get at you, that nobody dreamed you 
would care for him.” 


886 . 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


“ Am I cold ? I think I shut myself up, as a 
kind of moral Vigilance Committee. It was not 
Ned’s handsome face; nor his money — though 
I’ve no need to tell you that. But, if there was 
one thing more than another that made me care 
for him, beyond the little fact that it was just he, 
it was his sunniness. I have not much fear of 
our life together, for, long as I have known him, 
I have never seen him out of temper. And as 
for me,” went on the girl, vehemently, “ I have 
seen so much of the effects of an uncontrolled 
temper in married life, that, sooner than speak the 
first unkind word, I would pray that I might be 
struck dead. And I haven’t said a prayer since 
I was a child ; ‘ Our Father which art in Heaven,’ 
is such a mockery.” 

Marion did her best in turning from the un- 
happy home of the past to the happy one of the 
future. 

“I suppose you have been making plans? 
Tell me about them.” And her friend’s face 
grew brighter, as she complied; for it was a 
pleasant picture, and she dearly loved the central 
figure in it. 

“We are to be married immediately. Ned 
wants it so. His father is as lovely as possible 


HOME AGAIN. 


387 


about the whole affair, and is going to give him 
a house, and in two years will take him into the 
firm.” For the younger Mr. Keith had surprised 
every one by the hold he took of business mat- 
ters. “ Molly is sweet as can be, and says she is 
delighted to have me for a sister. I want you to 
come in soon, and help us about shopping. I’ve 
planned to have you and Molly and Kitty and 
Gertie for bridesmaids. I expect Molly’s own 
wedding will be next on the list. There was a 
young New York man perfectly devoted to her 
last summer. But it was queer, after all, that it 
was you who was the first engaged of all our set, 
here in this quiet little corner, and to the man we 
were all raving over.” 

“ I’d like to have him hear that.” 

“We want Arthur for best man. I was sur- 
prised Gertie took my news so coolly. She’s 
always had the queerest dislike toward Molly 
Keith, and I thought to hear she was to be her 
sister would upset her utterly. But she seems to 
have got over the feeling lately.” 

“ It’s the atmosphere of love, maybe,” sug- 
gested Marion. “What are you going to be 
married in ? ” And soon the two girls were lost 
in a discussion of the rival merits of silk and 


388 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

satin, and all the delightful bewilderment of a 
trousseau to which no limit had been placed by 
the bride’s father — if his mood did not change 
before the ceremony. 

“ Stay to tea, do ! ” as Annie looked at her 
watch. “Arthur and mother are coming home 
to-night.” 

“You’ll be better alone, thank you. Besides, 
Ned was to meet me at the depot. Be sure and 
come in Monday. Give my love to them all, and 
tell Arthur we expect him to get strong enough 
by October to help us through the wedding.” 

Marion went out to the dining-room to take a 
last look at the table. She stood leaning against 
the mantel, thinking. It was a year ago to-day 
since she had run down that first night to make 
sure everything was “ nice and ready.” The 
same loving thought for others that was in the 
act now had been there then ; but, in the 
twelvemonth that lay between, it had grown 
and budded, and bid fair to blossom into a 
lovely womanhood. But there was one great 
difference. Instead of the underlying worry and 
discontent was a deep, sweet gladness, that tinged 
everything. 

How oddly everything had settled itself. Ar- 


HOME AGAIN. 


389 


thur was content in his position, and experience 
was perhaps giving him what years of the longed- 
for study in Paris and Vienna might not have. 
And the practice? Circumscribed, a hospital 
physician’s practice might be, but there was the 
little office, and — John had worked his way up. 
It was better so, perhaps. 

Kitty came down and stood again on the 
threshold, looking at the clock. 

“ They won’t be here for five minutes yet.” 
She must have been thinking, too, for she went 
on: “We’ve been here just a year. What a 
short one it has been; and yet, somehow, I feel 
older than I ever did in a year before. I’m so 
glad mother’s coming home to-night.” 

Home I Yes, in spite of the dismal forebod- 
ings, it had become that to both. She had felt 
,the first possibility a year ago, with mother’s 
coming. But something had destroyed the feel- 
ing — yes, she remembered that, too. 

After all, it wasn’t money, nor a lovely house, 
nor books, nor pictures that made home, but — 
mother was coming, and Arthur was well, and 
Kitty — how pretty Kitty looked as she stood 
there. And then the deep, glad undercurrent 
welled up and mingled with the rest, older, but 


390 


FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


at that moment hardly sweeter ; it was that that 
made it — what mother embodied — love. Love 
always, love to the end. 

“ O Kitty,” she said, softly, nor felt it strange 
that she should appeal to her sister for sympathy 
in this newest, deepest experience of all that had 
come to her. 

They were coming, mother and Arthur. The 
latter pale, and not so good-looking as formerly ; 
for his beard, which, in spite of the protestations 
of his family, he was again cultivating, was in its 
early stages. Marion and Kitty were on the 
porch to welcome them ; Ann, in a state of hardly 
less excitement, behind, with her fervent “God 
bless you. Dr. Arthur ! ” 

Nobody ate much that night, though Ann’s 
rolls were browned to just the right shade, the 
wine-jelly was exactly as mother liked it, and the 
chocolate frosting on the cake was “ as thick as 
caramel, please.” But they lingered a long while 
over the meal, rejoicing to be “ home again, and 
all there.” 

Later, they were on the porch. Mother in 
her farorite low chair — one of the camelopard 
species ; Arthur in the easy-chair, the girls on 
cushions on the steps. So they sat till the stars 


HOME AGAIN. 


391 


came out, and the frogs in the marsh seemed 
croaking with unwonted vigor. Kitty had been 
tossing crumbs to her pet one, that hopped up 
the path every night. Beauty had just strolled 
around the corner, and, as though averse to see- 
ing another share her mistress’ attentions, came 
up and curled in her lap. 

“ It’s a farewell concert to Mrs. Eliot,” sug- 
gested Marion. “ I wonder if it is her going that 
has broken the spell. Something has happened 
in the last few weeks to about every family in 
the Hollow. Mr. Dysart was so delighted with 
his harvest that he overate, and was in bed a 
week. It has cast a veil of melancholy over him, 
and his jests are less frequent. Mrs. Drew has 
borrowed Auntie Jim, so we are forever rid of 
that, and my heart has grown softer toward our 
neighbor in her loneliness. Effie Faulkner is 
going, too ; did you know, Kitty ? Where ? 
Superfluous, my dear ! Where could a girl with 
hoops, bangles, and a hair-net go but to a flat at 
the South End ? Mr. Duncan has gone into the 
library for the winter. Mr. Duncan’s son, after 
crying ‘ Wolf! ’ ever since he reached the stage of 
incipient manhood, for the first time in his inno- 
cent little life, was actually dissipated ; went on 


392 FORCED ACQUAINTANCES. 

an excursion down the harbor, and was not fit to 
take the boat back the next day. His firm dis- 
charged him, and he is going West on a ranch. 
There is no opening for a young man here, 
he says. I never hear that complaint without 
thinking of the picture of Quintus Curtius and 
the chasm, with the caption, ‘ A good opening for 
a young man.’ So it is ; the very best — for a 
young man of the Duncan boy’s kind.” 

‘‘Archimedes was not the only person who 
merely wanted a standpoint to move the world. 
Patience and genius find the standpoint.” 

It was Arthur who spoke, with the manly 
seriousness that now and then told of the charac- 
ter that lay beneath a curious mixture of reserve 
and nonsense. 

“ School begins on Monday,” said Kitty, rather 
inconsequently. “ But I don’t dread it as I did 
last year, though the prospect is not one of 
unalloyed bliss. However, I shall not have 
to study chemistry ; that makes a difference. 
Does — everything — I wonder — make — a dif- 
erence? ” 

The question was not to the others, nor did it 
so much join on to the spoken words as to 
the unspoken thoughts. It was put in her 


HOME AGAIN. 


393 


dreamy fashion as she sat there, with her chin 
in her palms and elbows oh her knees, looking 
up at the stars, as though she expected to find 
her answer there. And perhaps, unwitting, it 
was only there she could find it. 

They were silent again, after the little flash of 
talk ; and so they sat, in the summer night, all 
with a soft, delicious sense of nearness to one 
another, with which the fair scene seemed to har- 
monize. 

Farther out it reached, too. The young doc- 
tor found his power to help and sympathize 
strengthened and widened by his sacrifices and 
generous aid to those nearest him, with a keener 
feeling for the poverty and sorrowful struggles 
that are revealed, in so many of its phases, to the 
physician and friend. And he had lain near to 
death, and, gentle as he was by nature and breed- 
ing, there was a new tenderness in his manner 
now, a new understanding in the look that met 
his mother’s. Marion’s angles softened and 
rounded, the “another first ” making of necessity 
its study of other people’s natures and needs. 
And Kitty, shaken out — nay, better, shaking 
herself out now — of the apathy and selfishness 
in which she had lived alone. 


394 


FOBCED ACQUAINTANCES. 


Nearer to each other ; that they knew. Nearer 
to humanity ; that, too, in some vague way they 
felt. 

But through it all and beyond it, nearer, too, 
to the stars. 




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